Mexican Singer Anahi Accused of Buying Twitter Followers Conz Preti - Univision News
go to original June 15, 2012

Claims began in 2010 by René Perez Joglar, lead singer of Calle 13, when he used Twitter to call out Anahi.

According to Twitaholic, one of the many tools to track users on Twitter, Anahí is the most followed person in Mexico with over 4.3 million followers. She is closely followed by octogenarian comedian Roberto Gomez Bolaños, aka Chespirito, who has over 3.3 million followers. Felipe Calderón, president of Mexico, has 1.7 million followers.

This would be no news if it weren’t for the fact that Anahí has been accused of buying followers, a practice that although not illegal, is highly frowned upon by those who use the social network on a regular basis.

Such claims began in 2010 by René Perez Joglar, lead singer of Calle 13, when he used Twitter to call out Anahi. “Is it possible that artists are also buying Twitter followers? I suspect of Anahí and Jon Secada…” tweeted the Puerto Rican singer in Spanish. “It’s impossible to have 1 million followers and only 200 views on a twitpic photo… this is weird.”

The scandal came to life few days ago when Mexican publications started questioning once again the online popularity of the 29-year-old telenovela/pop star.

Although buying Twitter followers is extremely easy these days - just search for “buy Twitter followers” on Google and you will get an array of options and pricing – it is impossible for us to know whether someone’s army of virtual fans is real or not.

One of the accusations made to try to prove her sketchy gain of followers is that Anahí has a lot of bots mixed along her fans. An account is considered a bot if the profile image has a default egg image or a photo of a celebrity, has little or no followers and has few or very similar tweets. Yes, million of bots are created on a daily basis, but being followed by them does not mean that one is paying them to follow you.

When taking a closer look at Anahí’s most recent followers, we can see that most of them are following verified accounts — meaning Twitter has double checked this is the official account for the celebrity — and/or public figures. Taking this into consideration, should we also point fingers at Shakira, Lady Gaga, Paulina Rubio and others of buying followers?

Not long ago, Newt Gingrich was accused by Gawker of also buying followers. According to Mashable, nothing could be proved since several politicians showed the same high numbers of inactive followers, indicating that Gingrich was not doing anything different from the rest of the pack.

A factor that has not been brought into account into Anahí’s case is the ‘Who to follow’ list that Twitter used to curate and present to new users when they first created their account. Those recommended users got a head start gaining followers since their handles came up constantly. Today, that list is more dynamic and based on your interests and who you are already following. If a person creates his or her account to interact with Paulina Rubio, chances are that it will also be recommended to follow Anahí and other similar artists.

We invite you to add your charity or supporting organizations' news stories and coming events to PVAngels so we can share them with the world. Do it now!