Throwdown Between Official and Fake Twitter Accounts of the Famous

OFFICIAL ACCOUNTS vs FAKE ACCOUNTS What do you mean @HomerSimpson isn't real? Of course, all 235 Justin Bieber Twitter accounts aren't real.right? But we still love these fake accounts for their dedication to the persona they try to envision themselves to be and for the way they connect with us through social media. Shorty Awards took a look at some of the Fake Twitter handles and compared them with their respective official accounts. Actual accounts Parody accounts Number of followers Growth Number of followers The official Twitter account US President Barak Obama and the Parody Twitter account of Queen Elizabeth have the most number of followers on Twitter. 20% Barack Obama Barak Obama 76K 27.4M @BarackObama @ThePresObama CNN CNN 7.5M 142K CNIA The Fake CNN @CNN @TheFakeCNN 400K The Fake 15% THE PAKE ESPN ESTIT 6M ESri ESPN @espn @TheFakeESPN Pepsi Update @PepsiUpdate 1M 12K PEPSITM @pepsi Homer J Homer J Simpson @HomerSimpson 1M 72K Simpson @Homer JSimpson 10% TheBritish Elizabeth Windsor 440H IM Monarchy @BritishMonarchy @Queen_UK 366K BBC BBC Sport SPORT 883K BBC SPORF BBCSporf @BBCSporf @BBCSport 5% STAR 303K Star Wars WARS 351K Darth Vader @DepressedDarth @starwars Daily Mail Online @MailOnline Mailorine 27KDM The DM Reporter @DMReporter 230K Reporter Are fake accounts a thing of the past? Do they struggle to come up with interesting content? Many fake accounts are seeing lower growth or even negative growth rates now. -5% Proactive % The fake accounts have been equally prolific in tweeting like their official counterparts indicating dedication to the persona and the penchant for fun. Infact, the fake accounts, @TheFakeCNN and @TheFakeESPN have tweeted more than the official handles. original account fake account 100 100 66 96 80 99 | 88 93 81 78 74 73 67 65 54 61 54 43 Numbers of tweets 542 556 624 530 340 5049 O 539 2065 828 880 454 300 50 18 3 246 259 The Shorty Industry Awards honor the talented agen- has gone above and beyond in managing their brand's social presence to effectively enhance the company's cies, brands, and industry leaders behind the best social media channels, viral campaigns, websites, image, likeability, engagement and marketing effec- games, and applications. The Social Media Manager of SHORTY tiveness. AWARDS the Year Award, presented by Unmetric, the social media benchmarking company, honors the social media For more information, or to submit your nomination for manager from a consumer facing brand or agency that an award, visit www.shortyawards.com UNmetric Methodology Shorty Awards compiled the Official Account vs Fake Account using data from Unmetric's Data supplied by Unmetric, the social media benchmarking company. platform. The date range used was 17th January, 2013 to 17th February, 2013. For more information, visit www.unmetric.com, check out the Unmetric blog at blog.unmetric.com or email [email protected]