It’s a neat feeling. A big name in your industry is following you! You just received the notice that the one and only “john doe” is on your list of followers. You must be doing something right, huh?
Well, hopefully you are. But that doesn’t mean that “John Doe” is really following you. There are scores of scammers out there building profiles and twitter URLs using famous and easily recognizable names.
They follow you, hoping you’ll follow them in return. That gives them the chance to pitch their links to you. It’s a pretty inelegant form of spamming (and it’s hard to think that it would every really work), but there’s a lot of it going around.
Others pick up celebrity names or recognizable industry monickers for the sake of playing games or making fun of the person whose identity they snag.
If Brad Pitt or Angelina Jolie start following you, don’t expect to get invited to serve as a witness at their next adoption. You’re more than likely dealing with an impostor.
Sometimes, this can be harmless. In other cases, it can be a real aggravation. The people who are “losing” their names certainly can’t like it.
Although it probably won’t change the nature of your Twitter experience materially, you should be aware that there are Twitter fakes out there!
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