It can be even simpler. I'm working in the enterprise software space and get multiple emails a week stating we have been selected as on of the 'Top X vendors in X' and won the award for Y by a certain magazine or by a local 'trade association', or can be part of a 'prestigieus' Top 100 list. The only thing we need to do to get the award is to buy some advertising space to cover costs. Normally this is between $3 and $5k.<p>The conversation pretty much stops after I indicate we are happy with the award and the nomination, but will not buy any advertising with them. Funny thing is: a few weeks later some of the vendors in the space will show of their new award of place on the Top X list on their LinkedIn pages :)
24,000 twitter followers for $30, one time payment? Makes me wonder what the ratio of live humans to automatically generated bot-accounts on twitter is. And the total number of registered twitter usernames in existence.
I tested these kinds of pay for follower services a few years ago. I had 75k twitter followers in less than a week for under $100.<p>Within three months I had 13k<p>Within a year I had about 2k<p>It hovered around there.<p>On facebook I bought 3k likes for around $30<p>I still have 1k likes for that page.<p>Basically, the only reason I have read that you would want to buy followers is that it can help boost your SEO ranking. It will not last long though and I bet the big social media companies start monitoring for it happening to your account/page if they detect abuse.
I guess this works both ways. Buy a bunch of followers a week before heading to Vegas, then tweet that you can't wait for your trip to #vegas. Watch the promoters start offering you free stuff.