Australia - How is this for an innovative social media marketing idea? An Australian marketing company called  uSocial is offering a paid service that finds followers for users of the micro-blogging service Twitter. Is it cheating? You decide.

Followers are available in blocks starting at $87 for 1,000. The biggest block uSocial is selling is 100,000 people. USocial said businesses and individuals were queuing up to use its follower finding service, according to BBC.

The service finds potential followers by searching Twitter and working out what individual users are interested in to match them with the client, then sends messages to potential followers telling them about the new Twitter user they might want to follow.

USocial estimated that each follower on Twitter was worth about 10 cents a month to a company that got them to sign up. The money would be made from adverts and sales on websites that followers click through to.

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uSocial