A new company from down under is shaking up social networks by offering friends and followers for sale. Featured in this week’s Economist,  uSocial from Australia claims they’ll roundup 1,000 Facebook friends for $177.  They also provide similar services for helping your business or campaign gain popularity on Twitter, Digg, and other social bookmarking sites.  Although most of the social networking sites oppose this kind of inorganic growth, it does present them with an explicit question of quality vs. quantity.  Surely the networks want increase interaction among its members, that’s why Facebook upgraded their ad platform with the capability to become a fan within an ad; but will stretching the networks too thin decrease the depth of interaction?

This situation reminds me a lot about buying email lists for political campaigns and non-profits.  No one expects all the purchased records will become  quality leads, but if say, 20% of them do, then it still can definitely be worth the money.  I’m sure the same theory is principally true for the leads provided by uSocial.   As with any recruitment plan however, it should be just one tactic in a diverse plan to gain supporters of different audiences.