Why ‘popular’ Philadelphians tend to have more fake Twitter followers

Are you a little envious of those super-tweeters with thousands of followers? Well, they may be embellishing their popularity a bit.

NewsWorks partner Technically Philly reports some famous Philadelphians who tweet have lots of followers that are either fake or inactive Twitter users.

Using the new web tool “Fake Follower Check,” which assesses how many of a twitter user’s followers are fake or inactive, Technically Philly found that some big names aren’t as big as one might think on twitter.

For example, the mayor’s Twitter handle has more than 29,000 followers. But hold on, 6 percent of those followers are fakes, and 27 percent are not active twitter users.

The most glaring example of Twitter malfeasance, though, is the city’s most popular tweeter, Roots drummer Questlove. Of his 2.2 million followers, just under 1/5 are not real Twitter users, and  half are no longer using Twitter.

It’s unclear exactly where all of these fake followers come from, though some websites offer them as a way to boost the cache of a particular brand or personality — for as little as one penny each.

To be fair, NewsWorks Tonight Producer, Shai Ben-Yaacov, with a mere 84 followers, registered one percent of his followers as fake.  He claims not to have “bought” that follower.