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It appears Cisco has been buying Twitter followers for Padmasree Warrior

Did Cisco purposely violate the Twitter rules that forbid the purchasing of accounts in order to gain followers? Why? Because approximately half-a-million (509,426) of the Twitter followers of Cisco's Chief Strategy Officer, Padmasree Warrior, are fake Twitter accounts.

Tue, 8/14/12 - 11:59pm    View comments

Update 7/3/2013:

PCWorld: Fake Twitter-follower market is adapting, growing, and getting ever cheaper

Update 9/1/2012:

Is Cisco buying Twitter followers for CSO?

"I signed up to follow the networking business's CSO to see what competitive insights I could gain from the CSO. The tweets coming out of the Cisco Chief Strategy Officer was were often so pointless that they seemed to be coming from a 16-year-old and not a key business person in the IT world.

"The tweets were so pointless I just ignored them, now I am going to expend the effort to actually unfollow Warrior....

"Done — So now Cisco you will have to buy another Twitter followers to follow pointless tweets for your business leaders — Now get back to making great network gear."

Update 8/23/2012:

Today I received an email from Twitter soliciting payment for followers (Twitter appears to be breaking its own rules in order to make money):

Pay Twitter for Followers

Update 8/22/2012:

New York Times expose:

Twitter Followers For Sale

"Twitter followers are sold in two ways: 'Targeted' followers, as they are known in the industry, are harvested using software that seeks out Twitter users with similar interests and follows them, betting that many will return the favor. 'Generated' followers are from Twitter accounts that are either inactive or created by spamming computers - often referred to as bots."

Update 8/16/2012:

On August 14th, Padmasree Warrior "retweeted" her video interview to her 1.4 million followers on Twitter:

Amazingly, Warrior's video interview now has a stunning grand total of 293 views!

On August 5th the Aspen Institute published a video interview with Cisco's Chief Strategy Officer, Padmasree Warrior.

Most curiously as of August 14th, that video has had only 185 views. So how in the heck can Padmasree Warrior simultaneously have 1,411,056 followers on Twitter?

I mean, it just doesn't add up, Padmasree Warrior has a measly 185 video views against a Twitter following of 1.4 million:

Interestingly earlier today, Network World published a scathing story on the business of purchasing fake Twitter accounts:

Inside the real economy behind fake Twitter accounts

Twitter Rules specifically forbid:

• Creating or purchasing accounts in order to gain followers.
• Using or promoting third-party sites that claim to get you more followers (such as follower trains, sites promising "more followers fast," or any other site that offers to automatically add followers to your account).

TwitterAudit which exposes Twitter fraud is reporting:

Approximately half-a-million (509,426) of the Twitter followers of Cisco's Chief Strategy Officer, Padmasree Warrior, are fake Twitter accounts:

"Each audit takes a random sample of 5000 Twitter followers for a user and calculates a score for each follower. This score is based on number of tweets, date of the last tweet, and ratio of followers to friends. We use these scores to determine whether any given user is real or fake. Of course, this scoring method is not perfect but it is a good way to tell if someone with lots of followers is likely to have increased their follower count by inorganic, fraudulent, or dishonest means."

With approximately 509,426 fake Twitter followers, it appears Cisco has used inorganic, fraudulent, or dishonest means to artificially inflate the appearance of credibility and influence of Cisco's Chief Strategy Officer, Padmasree Warrior (at least according to TwitterAudit).

Additionally, I ran the following Status People check on the 1.4 million Twitter followers of Cisco Chief Strategy Officer, Padmasree Warrior:

So according to the above Status People analysis results, over 900,000 of the Twitter followers of Cisco's Chief Strategy Officer, Padmasree Warrior, are either fake or inactive!

Below, you can view the revealing study published by Barracuda Labs with regard to:

The Underground economy of buying Twitter followers

If Cisco is purchasing for Padmasree Warrior "fake Twitter accounts" and/or "Twitter followers" in order to artificially inflate the appearance of credibility and influence of Cisco's Chief Strategy Officer, what does that say about the integrity and honesty of Cisco's executive culture?

Cisco's David McCulloch handles all Public Relations and Media Requests for Cisco's Chief Strategy Officer, Padmasree Warrior. You may wish to telephone McCulloch directly at 408-853-6339 or email him at damccull@cisco.com to receive Cisco's official response as to why Cisco appears to be purchasing fake Twitter accounts and/or Twitter followers for Padmasree Warrior.
 

Related story:

Almost HALF of Cisco Switching Twitter followers are fake
 

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