Reality Check: 10-15% Of Brands’ Social Media Fans, Likes And Reviews Will Be Fake By 2014, Says Gartner

Fake fans, fake "likes" and fake reviews are some of the worst aspects of social media -- or at least for those of us earnest enough to take user-generated content and the will of the crowd seriously. Now, new research from Gartner lays bare the fact that it's only going to get worse, as paid social media interactions become a more established industry unto themselves. The analysts predict that by 2014, some 10%-15% of all social media reviews and other forms of engagement will be fake, paid for by the companies getting endorsed. Ed Thompson, Gartner analyst and co-author of the report, says that this compares to about 1%-4% of social media interactions being paid today -- a number he says is based on research on paid and automatically generated reviews and other interactions for different brands.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Techcrunch/~3/CMqX3hdBzco/

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