Money Can Make Anyone Popular on Facebook

The Australian company uSocial is in the business of selling friends and fans to Facebook users, especially those who are advertising their product on the social networking site.

USocial says that each friend or fan a company has on Facebook is worth $1 in return revenue, writes PC World. So for 7.6 cents per friend, they will go out, find people who might be interested in the company's product, and send them friend requests. In no time the company could have 1,000, 5,000, or 10,000 friends.

According to the San Francisco Chronicle, uSocial's customers have included such the Jackson family, the U. S. Marines, and the Mormon Church.

USocial's CEO Leon Hill said in a statement: "The simple fact is that with a large following on Facebook, you have an instant and targeted group of people you can contact and promote whatever it is you want to promote."

The friend-finding company has tried their luck on other social sites and have been met with resistance, Reuters reports. Twitter tried to shut them down by claiming that they were spamming Twitter members. Digg.com got upset when uSocial started selling votes for top news stories and websites.