What to make of uSocial…. It’s already gained notoriety by ’selling’ Twitter followers and Facebook friends. Now it’s offering to help unknown YouTube users raise their profile, too.
“Using several of our methods, we can get totally unknown video in front of the eyes of potentially millions of people, which can mean megabucks to anyone who is in business,” according to uSocial CEO Leon Hill.
How does uSocial do this? And how to its methods sit in among consumers who want transparency in business? uSocial claims it has revolutionized online advertising and promotions: instead of paying per click, it has created what it describes as “the world’s first and so-far only true, unlimited press release distribution service, where you can send any number of press releases to promote your business to our list of over 560,000 media contacts.”
It also boasts the “cheapest and most cost-effective” social bookmarking service, so you can link to over 170 social networks.
Aren’t businesses being duplicitous if they ‘buy’ followers and viewers? And how does uSocial fulfil its promise, anyway? Do ‘bought’ followers know they are part of a promotional package? This post is sceptical:
The first alarm was the simple fact that uSocial themselves only have ~15, 500 followers at the time of writing this posting. Then, they are following back all 15k which I bet most are the same bots that are driving their numbers. How can they guarantee you will have that many followers when the company themselves is not able to meet that claim?
It leads me to believe that most of what you are purchasing are bots or other accounts that are not true humans as we would hope when engaging such a service. What kind of business ROI would we get from a bunch of bots? Who guarantees the actual results? How long will these followers stay? Where is the interaction? How do you get feedback or is anyone there to even click on your blog posting links or product information.
Whether it can deliver on YouTube eyeballs remains to be seen. There’s nothing wrong with businesses that want to raise awareness of their brand. But will they win fans or make foes? That’s another matter entirely.
Anyone have any experience of using its services?
