Ticketmaster Creates Fake Facebook Profiles to Look More Popular
April 14, 2008 – 9:38 am
When I saw that 156,000 people had become “fans” of Ticketmaster on Facebook, I got suspicious. Their fan page is now the 5th most popular on Facebook - they have more fans than Hillary Clinton. “Come on! There are not 156,000 people who would willingly display that they were fans of an evil corporation that bilks its customers for massive, inexplicable fees,” I thought.
So, just who is a fan of Ticketmaster on Facebook? I decided to take a look at some of the fans that pop up on their page.
I hid my actual friends who showed up to protect their identities… although really, I should’ve kept their pictures up there publicly shame them on here for declaring themselves fans of Ticketmaster.
These other “fans” looked a little strange. None of them have pictures in their profiles. And honestly, Tom Jones? It’s not unusual to have the name of a famous pop star, I guess, but that name seems a little generic. None of these people are in my network (or any network, for that matter), so since I can’t look at their profiles, I decided to view their friends.
Huh. That’s a strange coincidence. All of them are “fans” of Ticketmaster, yet none of them have any friends. This seems suspicious.
I reloaded again. And again. And again. More and more of these faceless profiles kept coming up. At some point, it looks like Ticketmaster just gave up and stopped trying to make them look real.
Oh, thank God! It’s Stebe Jobs, not Steve. I was worried for a second. And Kjjkh Jkhjkk? Seriously, did Ticketmaster hire monkeys to make these profiles?
Unsurprisingly, all of these profiles also had no friends.
There’s no telling just how many of these there are, but either Ticketmaster has a lot of very lonely fans, or they’re exactly as evil as we already thought they were.
[For the record, all of my Facebook fans are real. At least I hope they are.]
Update: After some more digging, we come to the root of the problem: Back in October, Ticketmaster offered Facebook users a $5 iTunes gift card to add Ticketmaster as a fan. Some enterprising Facebook users, hell-bent on mooching off Ticketmaster’s teat (more power to ‘em!), created tons of fake profiles to get the gift card.
This brings up a new issue: Ticketmaster didn’t create profiles, but they essentially bribed people to create fake Facebook profiles with this offer (which any idiot should have figured would happen). It was a win-win situation for Ticketmaster; they gave out these iTunes gift cards, and their popularity among Facebook users skyrocketed… not because all of them were Ticketmaster loyalists, but because they were paid off.
These days, Ticketmaster is promoting a contest on Facebook - the fan page seems to suggest that you have to be a fan of Ticketmaster in order to win their contest. But that’s a lie: in order to enter, you don’t even need to be a member of Facebook.
The bottom line is, without these sleazy promotions, Ticketmaster might have as many fans on Facebook as my blog. Intrusive advertising was bad enough, but now Facebook has given corporations another opportunity to exploit consumers for their own benefit. And for those few who seriously became fans of Ticketmaster: if you actually think that adding a massive corporation to your collection of fan pages is ever going to benefit you, you are sadly mistaken.
34 Responses
…wow. I’m definitely no fanboy of Ticketmaster, but the company has just sunk to new lows in my opinion.
By LenaB on Apr 14, 2008
Tom Jones has no friends???
Now that - is unusual.
Oh!
I’m here all day folks!!!
By Chris on Apr 14, 2008
This is an excellent piece of investigative journalism. Fox5 worthy. Almost.
Facebook abuse is the new Friendster fraud. Or Match.com hoax - your face on a skinny person’s body. Or Jdate.com ruse - only half Jewish, but it’s the wrong half.
People or businesses will always take advantage of these social networking sites if it makes them feel more popular.
By ScottR on Apr 14, 2008
What would happen if we tried to friend Kjjkh Jkhjkk, the man (woman?) with no vowels?
By Beth on Apr 14, 2008
My god, there are 33 “Kjjkh Jkhjkk”s on Facebook. Are they all fans of TicketMaster?
By Beth on Apr 14, 2008
for fuck’s sake. if my work didn’t block facebook i would form a “hey ticketmaster, we know you gave yourself fake fans” group. someone get on that please.
By brooke on Apr 14, 2008
There may be 33 Kjjkh Jkhjkk’s… but there is only ONE Sdfjskfj Sklfjslfk.
No identity theft for Sdfjskfj.
By Beejus on Apr 14, 2008
Bother the Consumerist about it. They love ripping on Ticketmaster.
By Ri L. on Apr 14, 2008
There was a promotion where if you became a fan of Ticketmaster, you would get five free downloads on iTunes. Needless to say, people made multiple accounts.
By Ash B. on Apr 14, 2008
Ash B.: Yeah, I just figured that out myself. Boy, do I feel like an idiot now.
Then again, it’s still pretty pathetic that Ticketmaster had to PAY people to become fans of their page. And there’s no reason for people to do it now, since that promotion ended last November.
By Chris on Apr 14, 2008
People use bots to drive up there friend count and Myspace plays all the time. It’s a pathetic popularity contest that we all enter when we join these sites.
By dave Bear on Apr 14, 2008
I’m not real.
By Ross on Apr 14, 2008
Haha. I work for Ticketmaster. What a stupid, pathetic company with managers who have nothing better to do than micromanage what fucking colour socks I wear.
By No one in particular on Apr 14, 2008
I work for Ticketmaster, so I am really getting a kick out of this submission.
By Kjjkh Jkhjkk on Apr 14, 2008
For a while when you became a fan of Ticketmaster they would give you a code for 5 free iTunes downloads. I’m assuming people just made fake profiles to take advantage of the situation.
By Cheesegod on Apr 14, 2008
I second what cheesegod said, infact i did it myself
By Mark on Apr 14, 2008
Had a lot of free time today, I guess? Seriously - good that you figured that out.
By Amy on Apr 14, 2008
“For a while when you became a fan of Ticketmaster they would give you a code for 5 free iTunes downloads. I’m assuming people just made fake profiles to take advantage of the situation.”
Correct. Many people I know made fake facebook profiles (it takes less than 2 minutes to make an email and facebook profile), then joined the group. You recieved 5 free songs, so the amount of songs you could get were pretty much limitless. I’m guessing they caught on and stopped the offer.
By Mike on Apr 14, 2008
While I created another profile to get another 5 downloads, I found that it didn’t work for me and assumed they somehow could tell by your IP..Facebook doesn’t have a good history of protecting personal information.
By Parker on Apr 14, 2008
Check out the facts for yourself. I ran through all of the claims that video made and they seemed legit.
Here’s some info from a quick google search too:
TheFacebook.com, created in February of 2004 by 21 year old Harvard student Mark Zuckerberg, is a student social network now active at more than 800 campuses, with more than 2.8 million registered users. [1] Among its features, TheFacebook allows a user to upload a picture of themselves and can include information about their favorite music, books, movies, their address, phone number, e-mail, clubs, jobs, educational history, and even political affiliations. Facebook is extremely popular, attracting on average 80 percent of a school’s undergraduate population. However, there are some questions raised regarding privacy concerns on the site, and when some digging is done to find out who is really behind the site’s management, there are more questions than answers.
The first venture capital money to come into TheFacebook, $500,000 worth, came from venture capitalist Peter Thiel, founder and former CEO of Paypal. [1] A Stanford graduate and former columnist for the Wall Street Journal, Thiel is author of the book “The Diversity Myth,” [2] which received praises from notable neo-conservatives such as William Kristol. [3] In fact, Thiel is on the board of the radical conservative group VanguardPAC. [4]
Further funding came in the form of $12.7 million from venture capital firm Accel Partners. Accel’s manager James Breyer was former chair of the National Venture Capital Association (NVAC). [1] Breyer served on NVAC’s board with Gilman Louie, CEO of In-Q-Tel, [5] a venture capital firm established by the Central Intelligence Agency in 1999. [6] This firm works in various aspects of information technology and intelligence, including most notably “nurturing data mining technologies.”
Breyer has also served on the board of BBN Technologies, a research and development firm known for spearheading the ARPANET, or what we know today as the Internet. [7] In October of 2004, Dr. Anita Jones climbed on board, becoming a part of a firm packed with leaders from other areas of Silicon Valley’s venture capital community, including none other than Gilman Louie. But what is most interesting is Dr. Jones’ experience prior to joining BBN.
Jones herself served on the Board of Directors for In-Q-Tel, and was previously the Director of Defense Research and Engineering for the U.S. Department of Defense. Her responsibilities included serving as an advisor to the Secretary of Defense and overseeing the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
While the nearly $13 million that came from Accel to fund The Facebook certainly looks suspicious and unfortunately disturbing after reviewing all of this information, the only problem on the surface seems to be the appearance of some incestuous relationships between the Pentagon, the CIA, and these venture capital firms. But this goes further than just the initial appearances. DARPA shot to national fame in 2002 when John Markoff of the New York Times announced the existence of the “Information Awareness Office” (IAO). [8] According to Wikipedia, “the IAO has the stated mission to gather as much information as possible about everyone, in a centralized location, for easy perusal by the United States government, including (though not limited to) Internet activity, credit card purchase histories, airline ticket purchases, car rentals, medical records, educational transcripts, driver’s licenses, utility bills, tax returns, and any other available data.” [9] Protests came from civil libertarians on both the right and the left who saw the IAO as a new Orwellian arm of the United States government. After Congress investigated DARPA’s project, funding was cut off and IAO was essentially dead in the water.
The Information Awareness Office seems to have survived some of its original purposes in a mutated form, found in today’s Facebook. In fact, one of IAO’s original example technologies included “human network analysis and behavior model building engines,” [10] a surprising echo of the social networking mapping that Facebook does using SVG visualizations. [11] Add that to the information that Facebook collects and compare it to the startlingly similar goal of the IAO. It appears at first glance that DoD, along with the CIA, has managed to circumvent its previous Congressionally established limitations and find corporate sponsorship for its programs, under the thin veil of a useful social network for unwitting college students.
And those college students continue to log on to TheFacebook, completely unaware of the massive affronts to their privacy. The so-called “Privacy Policy” [12] of Facebook includes a statement saying that they “may share your information with third parties, including responsible companies with which we have a relationship.” It goes on to say that, “We may be required to disclose customer information pursuant to lawful requests, such as subpoenas or court orders, or in compliance with applicable laws. Additionally, we may share account or other information when we believe it is necessary to comply with law or to protect our interests or property. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, agents or government agencies.”
Some of the aspects of the privacy policy are downright creepy and confusing. This particular gem is especially disturbing: “Thefacebook also collects information about you from other sources, such as newspapers and instant messaging services. This information is gathered regardless of your use of the Web Site.” And there’s no telling when the privacy policy may change. As of when this was written (July 1, 2005), the policy was effective as of June 28, 2005.
Who knows where the information they collect about these three million college students, alumni, and professors is going, or what they intend to do with it. The fact that these companies and agencies are all so closely related, and that The Facebook has almost no organizational transparency are all cause for concern. Hopefully we can soon uncover the truth.
[1] “Accel Partners Invests In Thefacebook.com” [Accel.com]
[2] Peter Thiel’s book, “The Diversity Myth” [Amazon.com]
[3] Kristol’s commentary, as well as others, can be found here:
[4] VanguardPAC Board of Advisors [TheVanguard.org]
[5] In-Q-Tel - About Us [In-Q-Tel.org]
[6] “Jim Breyer of Accel Partners Elected Chairman of National Venture Capital Association” [NVCA.org]
[7] General Catalyst Partners :: News - “BBN Technologies Appoints Dr. Anita K. Jones to Board of Directors” (This includes information about BBN’s involvement in ARPANET, as well as Jones’ past with DARPA and In-Q-Tel)
[8] New York Times - “Many Tools Of Big Brother Are Now Up And Running” by John Markoff and John Schwartz, December 23, 2002, Late Edition - Final, Section C, Page 1, Column 2 [NYTimes.com]
[9] Information Awareness Office [Wikipedia.org]
[10] The Internet Archive’s archived page of DARPA’s Information Awareness Office
[11] Thefacebook.com FAQ - Visualizations [Thefacebook.com]
[12] Thefacebook.com Privacy Policy [Thefacebook.com]
By The Facts on Apr 14, 2008
Like my comrade Kjjkh Jkhjkk #1 posted, this isn’t Ticketmaster trying to make fake friends. It’s all just fake profiles from scammers trying to win this contest:
http://www.livedaily.com/contests/339.html
By Kjjkh Jkhjkk #2 on Apr 14, 2008
Ha, this is funny, there are tons of em.
Na Sa
Duke Nukem
Bobby McFatpants
Chaos Persona
Te Te Te
Huppety Youguoe
Mitzi Thedog
It goes on and on and on and on.
By Drew on Apr 15, 2008
That’s hilarious. I think Comcast should do the same thing–I’m sure they only have fake friends, too.
By K-Dog on Apr 15, 2008
Ticketmaster was getting worse and worse, but i still used it when it was the only option..
Ticketmaster has oficially sunk to the bottom of my list.
By savannah on Apr 16, 2008
What you don’t know is that most of the money that ticketmaster collects is for the venue, the artist and the promoter, they keep around 20% of the fee. Also, half of the events have losses, so the promoters and venues offset a little bit of their losses with these fees (which sometimes is their only income in some venues)
By fan o fair comments on Apr 16, 2008
LOL did half of you commenters even make it to the end of the article?
It was random people trying to scan a company’s attempt to appear hip to the younger generation - a misguided one, but certainly not “a new low” as so many of you mention.
By JD on Apr 17, 2008
tickrtmaster were such assoles they sued someone for linking to their website in thw early days of the net.
By spidge on Apr 18, 2008
Darn those ticketmasters. They must be satan’s very spawn. Promotions and stuff. Giving away i-tunes so that people will make fake accounts on a handi-tard site for the socially but-fucked. Yikes. They sure are evil.
Does anyone not care more about the fact that you morons actually give a shit about this bullshit than that ticketmaster uses promotional gimmicks? I know I sure do. You folks suck.
By Josephine on Apr 20, 2008