Current Insight Community Cases

Essential Datacenter Tips On Application Performance Monitoring

The Importance Of Skilled Immigrants To The American Economy

Help A New Kind of Music Label Revolutionize The Industry

Mandates To Buy American Should Be More Carefully Considered

Navigating The New Business World After This Recession

Check out our CwF + RtB experiment.
Brought to you by Floor64 and the Techdirt crew.

stories filed under: "fake fans"
Overhype

Overhype

by Mike Masnick


Filed Under:
facebook, fake fans, fans

Companies:
facebook, ticketmaster



When The Best You Can Do Is Get Fake Facebook Fans, You Know You Have A PR Problem

from the get-some-help-please dept

Ticketmaster is widely considered one of the more hated companies in America, so it made a few people scratch their heads when they saw that Ticketmaster was near the top of the list in terms of the number of "fans" it had on Facebook. Valleywag points to an enterprising blogger who checked out who those fans were and noticed that many, many of the fans appear to be entirely fake creations. They have no picture, no other friends and they're only fans of Ticketmaster. In other words, it looks like Ticketmaster is "stuffing the ballot box" in order to look more popular than it actually is. That's pretty sad. Of course, as people in the comments note, it's not so much that Ticketmaster created the fake fans themselves: they simply offered a promotion to give any "fans" five free iTunes downloads. So it looks like a bunch of folks set up fake Facebook profiles just to get those five free downloads -- and Ticketmaster gets to "pretend" it has all these fans. Except, of course, now it just looks like a serious loser that has to pay for "fans" and gets a bunch of fake fans for its troubles.

26 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
Search Techdirt
And now, a word from our Sponsors..



Popular Posts
Poll

Which Internet Concern Worries You The Most?

 

 

 

 

 

 


Add Techdirt RSS To Your Reader
rss Add Techdirt to your Bloglines
Add Techdirt to your Google Add Techdirt to your My Yahoo
Add Techdirt to your Netvibes Add Techdirt to your Newsgator
Subscribe to Techdirt's Daily Email Newsletter

Techdirt's Daily Email Newsletter

Older Stuff

Tuesday

1:56pm: Jury Says Fictional Character Can Be Libelous (28)
12:44pm: Spam King Alan Ralsky Gets Four Years In Jail (28)
11:39am: Publishers Getting The Wrong Message Over eBook Piracy (39)
10:28am: Calling For An Independent Invention Defense In Patents (26)
9:12am: Microsoft Tries To Silence Revelation Of Bing Cashback Flaws; Leads To Revelation Of Other Problems (41)
8:03am: Don't Blame Facebook For Some Kids Beating Up Another Student (61)
6:46am: Hulu Telling Sites To Stop Embedding So Much (44)
5:00am: Once Again, If The Gov't Has Data, It Will Be Abused (42)
2:53am: As Expected, Social Networking Generation Running For Office Face Their Permanent Record Online (31)
12:55am: IMAX Sues Cinemark For Building Competing System... While Being An IMAX Customer (14)

Monday

10:26pm: Filmmaker Allowed To Use The Name Rin Tin Tin To Describe Rin Tin Tin (6)
8:25pm: Senators Begin Questioning ACTA Secrecy (32)
6:34pm: Brazil E-Voting Machines Not Hacked... But Van Eck Phreaking Allowed Hacker To Record Votes (15)
5:08pm: FCC Doesn't Think The Lack Of Competition Is A Major Barrier To Broadband? (36)
3:49pm: Heads Of Major Movies Studios Claiming They Just Want To Help Poor Indie Films Harmed By Piracy (47)
2:38pm: USPTO Convinced By Amazon That Online Gift Giving Patent Is Legit (19)
1:31pm: Tiburon Approves Recording Every Car That Enters/Leaves... Despite More Evidence Of Traffic Camera Abuse In UK (90)
12:18pm: Label Exec Arrested For Not Using Twitter To Disperse Crowd At Mall To See Singer (53)
11:01am: Spanish Court Dismisses Complaint From Nintendo Against Counterfiet DS Cartridges, Since They Add Functionality (12)
9:55am: Dear PR People: If Your Exec Has A Comment, Our Comments Are Open (25)
8:44am: What Kind Of Mickey Mouse (And Donald Duck) Lawsuits Are These? (23)
7:30am: Prosecutors Ending Lawsuit Against Lori Drew (13)
6:06am: Dear Rupert: You Don't Succeed By Making Life More Difficult For Users (70)
4:20am: ESPN Writer Suspended From Twitter (59)
2:10am: School Can't Handle Critical Community Message Board; Sends Legal Nastygram (21)

Friday

7:39pm: Liberian Laws Are A Secret Due To Copyright; Even The Gov't Doesn't Have Them (43)
6:56pm: Lily Allen: It's Ok To Sell My Counterfeit CDs, Just Don't Give My Music For Free (97)
6:10pm: EFF Looks To Bust Bogus Podcasting Patent; Needs Prior Art (34)
5:28pm: Google Blocking Set Top Boxes From Showing YouTube Unless They Pay Up? (65)
4:44pm: Entertainment Industry: Yes, Please Keep Negotiating Secret Copyright Treaty To Save Our Asses (43)
More arrow
Quick Links
Close
E-mail It