Apparently, if you don’t have any, you can buy friends – in Facebook, that is. And I’m not talking about the site’s game, Friends For Sale, where you and your Facebook friends compete to buy and sell each other as “pets”. This is the real deal.
uSocial, an Australian online marketing company, is selling actual friends and fans to Facebook members. The company is also offering a similar service to Twitter.
“Facebook is an extremely effective marketing tool,” uSocial’s CEO, Leon Hill, said in a statement.
“The simple fact is that with a large following on Facebook, you have an instant and targeted group of people you can contact and promote whatever it is you want to promote. The only problem is that it can be extremely difficult to achieve such a following, which is where we come in.” he added.
uSocial offers packages with 1,000 to 10,000 friends that cost from $177 to $1,167. Companies that uSocial counts as its investors include Microsoft Corp, Russian Internet investment firm Digital Sky Technologies, and Accel Partners, among others.
However, its not all smooth sailing for uSocial.
Twitter had tried shutting uSocial down because of spamming members, according to a couple of Australian websites. LA Times also reported that Digg.com also tried shutting down uSocial because it sells votes.
I wonder where all of this’ll lead to?
Source: http://tech.yahoo.com/news/nm/20090903/wr_nm/us_facebook_friends_life_tech
