Mitt Romney's fake Twitter followers

Due to the current public discussions about Mitt Romney´s Twitter account and his fake followers, Barracuda Labs took the opportunity to analyze them. This led to several interesting findings:

• Nearly all accounts of Mitt Romney´s followers are new: More than 80 percent of all followers are less than three months old and 25 percent of them are not even three weeks old.
• The number of his followers went up 17 percent in just one day (July 21, 2012).
• One in four of Mitt Romney´s new Twitter accounts have never sent a single tweet.
• 10 percent of these new accounts already have been suspended by Twitter.

The results of the analysis closely fit the “fake user” profile and allow the assumption that most of these recent followers of Mitt Romney are not from a general Twitter population but most likely from a paid Twitter follower service.

Excerpt from Net Security