Yes, on Friday, April 17, CNN (@CNN with 80,494 followers) acquired the Twitter account @CNNBrk with 1, 168,990 followers. @CNNBrk is a Twitter feed that delivered links to alert followers of CNN Breaking News. So, we see that people are being rewarded for selling their followers it is possible that a blackmarket economy will surface. People will continue using dirty tricks to build large numbers of followers, then sell those accounts to big corporations. It will result in be a large number of accounts that suddenly turn into sources of Twitter spam, and a large number of users who feel they’ve been tricked.
Many who were following @CNNBrk thought they following CNN itself. They had no idea that it was just some guy that had registered the @CNNBrk name, uploaded the CNN logo and then fed links to CNN content. CNN’s acquisition of @CNNBrk showed everyone us all username squatting on Twitter pays even though it is officially against the rules. We can expect to see millions of people signing up using trademarked IP, hoping to cash in later. (Read our previous post: Can You Buy/Sell a Twitter Name). Follow us on Twitter, click here.
CNN didn’t disclose financial details, but they did say they had been working with previous owner James Cox (@imajes) on the account for more than two years. On April 15, he did tweet referring to his visit to Atlanta, where CNN is based.
According to @chartbeat when @SmarterTwit posted this article, here were the tallies of the rational behind this pursuit of followers:
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