Friday 7 December 2012

New Tool Shows How Many Fake Twitter Followers You Have


Socialbakers

Socialbakers’ new tool gives Twitter users the ability to see how many of their followers are actually real and who are fake.
The social media analytics company based in the Czech Republic has released its new tool, aptly called Fake Followers Check.
The tool uses several guidelines to distinguish the ”fake or empty followers” from the real ones. The fake followers more than likely do these things:
  • The Following to Followers ratio is less than 50 Following to 1 Follower.
  • Some tweets are repeated more than three times each.
  • They have never tweeted.
  • Phrases like “diet,” “make money,” and “work from home” are overly repeated.
  • Over 90% of the tweets are retweets.
  • More than 90% of the tweets are links and the profile has a following to follower ration of 7 to 1 or more.
fake_followers

Followers that are thought to be inactive are those who have “only 1 or 2 retweets on profile” or their latest tweet is “older than 3 months.”
Socialbakers claims that the Fake Followers Check tool gives the ability to “type in any Twitter handle you want, which means that you can analyse anyone from Justin Bieber to your competition.”
Those who choose to use the tool however are limited to only 10 requests per day.

Will you be using Fake Follower Check? How many fake followers do you think you have?
Let us know your thoughts in the comments below

Monday 3 December 2012

Online Retailers Braced For A Manic Cyber Monday


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After a poor financial year in the UK, Online Retailers are hoping for a lucrative Cyber Monday as shoppers flock online to buy their seasonal gifts.
Cyber Monday, one of the most recent American ideas to cross the Atlantic, was originally conceived as a way of competing with the chaos of Black Friday, a major day for American retailers.

This year Cyber Monday has extra significance, with sales falling last month by 0.2% from last November according to BDO’s high street sales tracker – a drop partly due to adverse weather conditions.

Online shopping figures, however, are up 26% compared to last year, with credit card company Visa expecting the increase in online sales to continue: Visa are predicting 6.8 million transactions worth in the region of £320 million this Cyber Monday.



"A combination of pay day for the majority of consumers falling on the last Friday of the month and a weekend spent browsing the shops results in shoppers logging on to buy their gifts online on the subsequent Monday,” said a Visa spokesperson, "All of these factors will result in consumers spending £222,222 per minute, making 4722 transactions every 60 seconds."

Online retailer Amazon’s Chris North cites improving internet software on mobile devices and at home as a key factor in the increase of online sales:

“Monday 3 December could be the busiest day in the history of Amazon.co.uk",” said the company’s managing director, “As people increasingly shop on mobile devices and benefit from fast broadband at home, we’re seeing a move towards customers buying their Christmas gifts later in the evening when they are at home relaxing.”



A number of websites are even offering deals specific to Cyber Monday, though not to the extent done in America, where there is a special website, www.cybermonday.com, with hundreds of deals available.
This is Cyber Monday’s fourth year in the UK, after it was introduced on 30th November 2009, but all signs point to it being the most successful ever.

Have you bought anything on Cyber Monday?