August 10 , 2010

Facebook lets you buy your way up the social ladder

Popularity on sale to the highest bidder

The 'social' may soon be taken out of social media site Facebook as popularity on the site can now be sold to the highest bidder.

Social media marketing company uSocial.net (http://usocial.net/) recently began selling fans and friends on Facebook to businesses and organizations wanting to increase their exposure online and they've now announced they are selling up to 20 million fans at a time, meaning just about anyone with a fat wallet can be more popular than Lady Gaga, at least on Facebook.

The service is based on the principle that people use the site for marketing purposes and the more fans or friends one has on Facebook, the larger their potential client base. uSocial's service facilitates the delivery, or sale, of these connections to a Facebook profile.

"We designed the new service around the fact that there were thousands of businesses out there searching for information on how to get a larger fan base on Facebook," said uSocial.net's 25-year-old CEO and founder, Leon Hill. "Our new service now gives just about any business or wannabe celebrity the ability to attract the kind of status and popularity very few achieve."

The company sells packages of fans starting at $197 for 1000, which they say are all real people and can be targeted to whatever industry the customer's business is in.

Some are questioning whether this will remove a lot of the user-driven social aspect from Facebook, however as more businesses turn to advertising their services on the social media site, the demand for services like uSocial's will likely rise in the future.