Wanna be @the_real_shaq? That'll be $50,000...

03.07.2009
If you're a nobody who wants to be somebody in the online Web world, you don't need friends--just a thriving bank account. That's where comes into play. The company converts your cash into background support on the Web's top social sites: You can buy Diggs, votes on Yahoo Buzz, eyeballs for StumbleUpon ... and now, Twitter followers.

Depending on your spending limits, you can invest anywhere from $87 to $3,479 to pick up 1,000 to 100,000 Twitter followers respectively. But don't assume that your fan base will turn over to six digits the second you click the "purchase" button. The company boasts that it can bump you up by a thousand fans within the course of seven days or, "we'll provide you with a further 20% at no charge." One hundred thousand followers is a bit more ambitious of a goal, and uSocial promises the results will occur within a year's time.

So where do these followers come from? Not uSocial's Twitter, that's for sure--as of this article's writing, the company only boasts around 9,000 followers itself (insert joke about "a taste of one's own medicine" here). BBC News has on how the service actually works. To summarize, it appears that uSocial searches user interests to find relevant matches to whatever it is that you do, then asks said people to become your latest Twitter pal. Rinse, wash, repeat.

So just as long as you don't mind a bit of a delay, what would it cost you to reach the popularity of your favorite Twitter stars? Here's a list of how much you'd pony up to be your idols using the highest bracket of followers one can purchase through uSocial--you get a discount by purchasing large blocks of followers, after all.

: 2,291,923 followers, $80,017

: 1,516,149 followers, $52,185