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Who says you can't buy friends? An Australian online marketing company is selling friends and fans to Facebook members after offering a similar service to Twitter users.
Advertising, marketing and promoting company uSocial (usocial.net) said it was targeting social networking sites because of their huge advertising potential.
"Facebook is an extremely effective marketing tool," Leon Hill, uSocial CEO, said in a statement.
"The simple fact is that with a large following on Facebook, you have an instant and targeted group of people you can contact and promote whatever it is you want to promote," he added.
"The only problem is that it can be extremely difficult to achieve such a following, which is where we come in.
The company offers packages for Facebook, the world's number one social networking site, that start at 1,000 friends up to 10,000 friends at costs ranging from $177 to $1,167.
"All we do is send them a welcome message or friend request from the client. If they decide to go ahead and add that person as a friend or a fan then they will; if not, then they won't," Hill told Australian media.
Facebook is now the world's fourth-most visited website.
The company, which counts venture capitalist Peter Thiel, Accel Partners, Microsoft Corp and Russian Internet investment firm Digital Sky Technologies among its investors, has more than 250 million registered users.
But uSocial's packages are not without controversy.
According to some Australian websites, Twitter tried to shut uSocial down, accusing it of spamming members, while the Los Angeles Times reported that Digg.com, a website where people vote for their top news stories or websites, has also tried to shut down uSocial because it sells votes.
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(Agencies)
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誰說朋友不能買？澳大利亞一家網絡營銷公司目前正在向Facebook用戶出售“好友”和“粉絲”。之前該公司曾向Twitter用戶提供過類似服務。
uSocial 廣告、市場和營銷公司(usocial.net)稱，由于社交網站蘊藏著巨大的廣告潛力，他們正將目光瞄準這一領域。
uSocial公司首席執(zhí)行官利昂?希爾在一份聲明中稱：“Facebook是一種非常有效的營銷手段。”
他說：“最簡單的事實是，如果你在Facebook上擁有大批追隨者，你就可得到一批即時的目標客戶群，你可以隨時聯(lián)系這些人，推銷任何產品。”
“唯一的問題是，擁有這么多追隨者是一件很難的事，而這也正是我們的切入點。”
該公司向Facebook用戶提供了朋友數(shù)量從一千至一萬名不等的各檔套餐，價格則從177美元至1167美元不等。Facebook是全球第一大社交網站。
希爾在接受澳大利亞媒體采訪時說：“我們所做的事情就是代表客戶發(fā)送歡迎信息或好友邀請。收到邀請的人可以自行決定是否加此人為好友或粉絲。”
目前Facebook是全球第四大用戶訪問量最高的網站。
Facebook目前擁有超過2.5億的注冊用戶，其風險投資商包括皮特?泰爾、Accel合伙公司、微軟公司以及俄羅斯互聯(lián)網投資公司數(shù)字天空技術公司。
但uSocial提供的賣朋友服務也引發(fā)了爭議。
據澳大利亞一些網站報道，Twitter曾試圖屏蔽uSocial，原因是它向用戶發(fā)送垃圾信息。《洛杉磯時報》報道稱，新聞及新聞投票網Digg.com也曾因uSocial出售投票而對其進行屏蔽。
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（英語點津許雅寧 姍姍編輯）
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