Fake followers newest ploy, accusation in politics

Forget ballot box irregularities. There's a virtual dust-up under way over how Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney amassed more than 100,000 new Twitter followers in just one weekend. It may seem trivial, but not to social networking junkies or campaigns mindful of the need to project a digital image of popularity and power. An analysis by the technology firm Barracuda Labs found most of the Twitter users who followed Romney over that July weekend were probably fake, although it's impossible to know who's behind the spike: Romney's campaign, a supporter or an opponent. Romney went from 673,000 to 814,000 followers during that time, though that number has since risen to more than 861,000. President Barack Obama has more than 18 million followers. Zac Moffatt, the Romney campaign's digital director, said the campaign did not purchase the followers and the number is not something they care about.