With over 150,000 fans, Ticketmaster’s Facebook page is one of the most popular. Too bad most of its friends’ profiles are fake.

Reader Chris wrote in to let us know that he was incredulous that so many people could be fans of Ticketmaster, so he did a little investigating. What he found out, and what these screenshots I took demonstrate, is that most of Ticketmaster’s fans are fake profiles with names like “Hamm Beerger,” “Stebe Jobs,” or “Asdsd Dasdasdas.” They have no profile pictures and most of them have no friends other than Ticketmaster. What we originally thought was lazy astroturfing by Ticketmaster turned out to be lazy astroturfing sponsored by Ticketmaster. In October, Ticketmaster apparently ran a promotion offering five free iTunes downloads to Facebook users who added Ticketmaster as a friend. Neither Facebook nor Ticketmaster verified anything, and now Ticketmaster is more popular than Starbucks, Marmite, and the entire sport of basketball. For the record, all of Tax Cat’s fans are real.
Ticketmaster Creates Fake Facebook Profiles to Look More Popular [East Village Idiot] (Thanks to Chris and Mark!)

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