A Gawker story released Monday cited an unnamed former staffer as saying 80% of Gingrich?s Twitter followers are fake and Gingrich employed social media agencies to create fake accounts to boost his Twitter following. ?Newt employs a variety of agencies whose sole purpose is to procure Twitter followers for people who are shallow/insecure/unpopular enough to pay for them. As you might guess, Newt is most decidedly one of the people to which these agencies cater,? the unnamed source told Gawker.
Today, PeekYou, a social media analytics site, announced it used an algorithm to evaluate Gingrich?s Twitter followers and found that 92 percent of them are fake.
?Once the news broke yesterday the team went back to look at the report. The data supported that out of Newt?s 1.3 million followers only 8 percent (2 percent less than claimed in recent media reports), are identified by our algorithm as humans, meaning Newt?s follower count is really closer to 106,055,? Michael Hussey, CEO and founder of PeekYou!, said in the company?s blog.