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Gaming the System: How Marketers Rig the Social Media Machine

You might not "get paid to tweet," but the phrase ranks as Google’s ninth autofill option, so somebody’s searching for it.

Regular users of social networks generally collect friends and followers on a one-by-one basis, then use those connections to share their opinions and links to the latest “Double Rainbow” remix or whatever is making the rounds that day.

These systems are based on trust and loyalty, and as such, they present a massive opportunity to marketers who want to encourage those traits in their customers. People are more likely to trust people or companies that have lots of friends or YouTube views, so the incentive clearly exists to artificially inflate those counts — and a cottage industry is emerging to help them do just that.

By Eliot Van Buskirk

Full Story: http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/07/gaming-the-system-how-marketers-rig-the-social-media-machine/

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