If you're new here, you get all my posts for free by clicking on my RSS feed. Thanks for stopping by, I'm @tdhurst.

I hate this for so many reasons.

TWITTER FOR SALE — POPULARITY UP FOR GRABS

First it was popularity on social bookmarking sites like StumbleUpon that was being sold and now Twitter is in the sights of those looking to have their fame and status artificially increased.

Web traffic and promotion company uSocial.net – who famously received and ignored a Cease & Desist order from Digg after selling votes on the site – have just launched a service allowing Twitter users to purchase packages of followers if they are having trouble attaining them on their own.

Starting in packages of 1,000 and going up to 100,000 followers, the company launched the buy Twitter followers service not long ago with what they say was a massive response.

“It was obvious people had been looking for a service like this for some time as the day we launched we actually had to start turning people away before close of business,” said uSocial CEO Leon Hill. “It was a shock, but within a couple of days we revamped our systems to ensure we could handle the workload.”

uSocial themselves own three of their own Twitter accounts which have all been active for only seven weeks and each of them number between 8,000 and 14,000 followers, totaling over 30,000 people following their activities. It was the methods they used to create this large follower base in such a short amount of time that they now use on their clients accounts.

“We’ve had everyone from churches and automotive blogs, to Fortune 500 companies express interest and invest in our services,” said Hill. “And with the growing popularity of Twitter, we can only see an even larger variety of organizations and businesses jumping on the bandwagon.”

The service is the second offered by uSocial that works on unnaturally increasing rankings or popularity on a social site. Upon their launch in December of 2008 the only service the company offered was their paid social bookmarking services which allowed clients to purchase votes on sites like Digg and StumbleUpon. While they do now offer other services such as press release distribution, it seems their artificial popularity services are by far the most sought after.

“We have gotten some bad feedback about some of our services, though we do get a lot more positive than negative response,” said Hill.

uSocial no longer offer the paid social bookmarking services on their site as they state they have a large number of regularly contracted corporate clients who fill all their available slots. Despite this, Hill says they will be reopening this service for new clients very soon.

The company’s new Twitter services can be viewed by going to http://usocial.net/twitter_marketing, or for more information the company can be contacted via the form on their site.

I don’t get it. Honesty, authenticity and transparency rule in social media. How are companies like this making any money? Are they making money? Are brands actually using this service? If so, I want to know who.