● 01.27.17

●● The European Spam Office: 37% of Twitter ‘Followers’ Are Fake, Maybe Even Paid For (Waste of EPO Budget)

Posted in Europe, Patents at 7:37 pm by Dr. Roy Schestowitz

Summary: It seems as though around 37% of the EPO’s ‘followers’ in Twitter are fake, which raises all sorts of potentially legitimate questions about the EPO’s media team

THE EPO has almost as many Twitter ‘followers’ as the USPTO‘s Twitter ‘followers’ (we believe it used to be the opposite), but who are those ‘followers’ and how did they get there?

“Has the EPO resorted to these dirty tricks too?”Look at the so-called ‘followers’ of the EPO to spot a large bunch of “egg heads” (default icons) with no real names, barely any activity, etc. These are often used by so-called ‘SEO experts’, i.e. spammers. Such paid-for spam (“Followers Farming”) is used by some insecure individuals and organisations to create an illusion of magnitude/importance/clout/size, but they sort of rely on people not checking where the numbers come from. Has the EPO resorted to these dirty tricks too? In other words, is the EPO supplying money to spammers and scammers? We don’t know for sure, but a very large proportion, well over a third in fact, are dummy/spam accounts, based on this Twitter audit carried out by Petra Kramer from the Netherlands. We have not checked what the EPO is up to in LinkedIn, Facebook etc. Maybe readers can tell us…

The EPO openly bragged about these numbers not too long ago, which means it’s very conscious of such ‘vanity’ numbers. Judging by the low level of interaction/engagement with EPO tweets, we were already very sceptical of the legitimacy of these so-called ‘followers’.

“Well, we already know, based on leaks, that the EPO wastes millions of Euros interjecting itself into the media. So why not so-called ‘social media’ too?”If anyone out there has further information about this, please supply it to us confidentially.

The EPO is not exactly enjoying positive publicity right now. We need an English translation of this new page in German; SUEPO says it’s a “[s]ummary only, press article requires registration and payment.”

Well, we already know, based on leaks, that the EPO wastes millions of Euros interjecting itself into the media. So why not so-called ‘social media’ too? █

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