Mass has an appeal. By having a lot of followers, you will be seen in more places as a possible account to follow. And for many, a large number of followers also equals successful and interesting to follow.
Besides the above reasons, there are also people who simply enjoy getting in touch with new people and cultures. Perhaps it is also an idea to package this as the 1000-friends-on-Social-Media gift voucher?
Conclusions
Yes, Twitter friends are for sale. And they are not expensive! But the motley crew of friends that I bought with this greece phone number list experiment cannot be used directly from a marketing perspective. My timeline is unreadable (literally in the case of Russian and Asian Twitter users) and not focused on topics that interest me. And Klout is not really fooled either; at the time of writing, the score is 32 and that is only because of those two retweets. Without those retweets, the score would be 10 (and that is where you start). So you do not become influential within a few days by buying followers. What remains is the image and attraction factor. That will automatically lead to you getting more followers. I am curious about the experiences of others with such services and ideas about their usefulness.
Of course there are also variations on these services; for example, you can also buy Facebook fans and likes, Youtube views and website visitors. I have already started the experiment with Facebook and a report will follow of course.