Need a few thousand friends in a hurry? Chris, the self-described MySpace Man, has an offer for you.
For $199 (U.S.), Chris promises to deliver 6,000 to 10,000 MySpace friends to any marketer in just one week. The service is so successful at "EXPLODING" the size of a MySpace friend list, Chris writes on his blog at mysocialmarketing.com, that it should be named the "Whore ME!" package.
Businesses of all shapes and sizes are experimenting with marketing through sites such as MySpace and Facebook, creating online communities to nurture relationships with their most loyal and influential consumers.
Popular brands like Research In Motion Ltd.'s BlackBerry (8,253 MySpace friends) or Nike Soccer (47,481) have no trouble adding friends. Less famous brands are turning to services that round them up for a fee, seeking relevancy in a virtual world where status is measured by the length of your friend list.
But paying for friends is a proposition fraught with risk for limited reward, marketing experts say. "If someone ever figures out that you're paying for MySpace friends, your credibility on the Internet instantly turns to zero," says Nick Barbuto, who develops online media plans for marketers at Cossette Communication Group Inc.
MySpace also frowns on the services and has threatened to shut down several of them, claiming they violate its terms of service.
When two MySpace users agree to be friends, each includes the other's photo in their respective friend lists. Friend-adding sites, also known as friend trains, speed up the process by providing a steady stream of users eager for friends who can add each other. Users pay a premium to be at the top of the lists.
Mysocialmarketing.com works by placing its customers at the top of several of the friend trains. Chris, whose site lists only his first name, declined to be interviewed about the service.
Robert Kuhn, who runs a Pennsylvania-based friend train called friendfrost.com, says his clients include bands looking to recruit fans, small businesses, and individuals who just want to look popular. One of his paying clients is British tabloid model Kelly Bell, who used his service to help build up 9,128 MySpace friends. "Many have a website they want to promote," Mr. Kuhn said in an e-mail interview.
James Neath, who runs a friend train out of Manchester, England, says most of his clients are individuals who want more friends.
"Unfortunately, MySpace doesn't look too kindly on the whole situation," said Mr. Neath, chief executive officer of Friendr.net.
On his blog, Mr. Neath has published an e-mail exchange with MySpace's "abuse manager" Jason Wiley, who shut down his MySpace page and ordered him to close Friendr. "Look, you can shut down or I can get Fox legal to shut you down, it's your choice," Mr. Wiley wrote. MySpace and the Fox television network are both owned by News Corp.
Another friend-adder service, fakeyourspace.com, allowed MySpace and Facebook users to "purchase hot models as friends for only 99 cents a month," according to its sales pitch. The fee included two personalized messages from a model each month. The site reportedly shut down after its provider of stock model photographs said the images were not used properly.
