Figure this as you like it

Rajasthan Chief Minister Ashok Gehlot is soaring on popularity charts these days. In a whirlwind 30 days,Gehlot amassed 45,562 new likes on his Facebook page,taking the count to more than 2 lakh,though now a course correction is on. In the wake of the flood of likes,Istanbul replaced Jaipur as the city that liked him the most. As the poll bugle rings out,it seems that the CM is keen to buy himself some Internet love. However,as the figures below show,hes not the first politician accused of buying popularity from Lebanon to the US

CANADA

n Pauline Marois,

Quebec premier,was accused of buying likes on her Facebook page when the numbers spiked for one-and-a-half weeks in June 2012,before returning to the original count.

UNITED STATES

An inspector generals report in May found the State Department had spent 630,000 on two campaigns for four of its FB pages. The fan base increased from 100,000 to more than 2 million.

n In his presidential campaign,Republican Mitt Romney was accused of having bought followers on Twitter and likes on FB. On July 20,2012,Romneys account added followers at 25 per second,including Beliebers,empty accounts.

UNITED kingdom

n Last year,the Tory website RightAngle was accused of buying likes on FB in bulk for its grassroots campaign. In a short time,RightAngles account garnered 9,000 likes only to disappear later. Claiming to be speaking up for Britains silent majority,most of their likes were from teenagers in New Delhi.

israel

n In 2012,an online volunteer group of Labor Party alleged that out of 200,000 fans of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Facebook,only 17 per cent were Israeli and 4,900 fans were from Indonesia.

lebanon

n Lebanese politicians who care about their presence on FB pay up to 100 a day all to attract new fans.

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n Elias Skaff,former Lebanese MP,spent a considerable amount to maintain his FB page,run by his wife. When FB cleaned up its system this year to remove fake profiles,his fan base crashed from 80,000 to 30,000

n Suleiman Frangieh,leader of the Marada movement210,000 likeshas a special team to maintain the page

n Abdel-Rahim Mrad,former Minister of Educationless than 20,000 likesspent 7,000. Realised he would need 60,000 to reach 100,000 fans

n Saleh el-Machnouk,a rising Sunni political activist,has more than 130,000 likes,spent around 8,000. Gets an average of 6,000 likes for a post. Says politicians pages with more than 20,000 fans must be paid for.

SHOPPING FOR LIKES

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Out of 955 million users of Facebook,Socialbakers,an analytics website,estimates almost 9 per cent,or 83 million accounts,are fake

Facebook,which receives 3.2 billion likes and comments every day,launched a crackdown on fake likes last year,eliminating 1 per cent of likes on any page on an average. Some industry experts,however,believe Facebook could axe as much as 25 per cent of likes.

From charging 5 for 1,000 likes to a small fortune for 100,000 likes and even buying targeted fans,shopping for likes has become a lucrative business.

Phoney or zombie profiles created by unknown entities can flood pages with likes. These zombie profiles run scripts such as Codename:Like. For 50,Codename:Like logs on to a fake account,finds the target page you want,and clicks the like button on that accounts behalf. It then goes on to the next fake account and repeats the process as often as you want.

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You can spend a little more money and get versions of Codename:Like that let you use proxies,fool security programmes designed to detect bots,and add fake friends and subscribers.

For one-fifth of a dollar,you can get a generic account unverified by FB. For a phone-verified accountfor which FB sends a code via text messageprices start at 1.50.