Danny Sheridan is a USA Today sports analyst and handicapper. According to recent reports, he may also be in the business of buying followers on Twitter.
Believe it or not, there are services available that claim to sell thousands of Twitter followers. Apparently, the kind of followers purchased from a service like this are not the same as your standard Twitter users. The bought followers have usernames made up of collections of letters and numbers that more resemble license plates.
Deadspin looked into Sheridan’s follower count numbers:
And then, starting on the first of June, something crazy happened. His follower count started to skyrocket. Between June 1 and today, his Twitter follower count went from some 11,000 to nearly 400,000. For the last month, he has been picking up thousands and thousands of followers a day. Between June 6 and June 10, according to TwitterCounter, Sheridan picked up exactly—exactly—27,791 followers each day; for the next 10 days, he received exactly 12,085 followers per day. WagerMinds points out that his most recent followers were clearly bots.
Between June 6-10, Danny Sheridan picked up exactly 27,791 followers/day. Yeah, that's not fishy at all.
— Baxter Holmes (@Baxter) June 29, 2012
Even though Sheridan’s follower gains in the last month are astounding, no one knows for sure that he purchased the followers. Still, the topic has been Twitter gold.
'Danny Sheridan buys his Twitter followers' is dumb. He's a blowhard (pardon my language) and he hasn't been relevant in like 10 yrs.
— Fantasource (@fantasource) June 29, 2012
@beyondthebets @stevecofield: Danny Sheridan Twitter thing is a riot. Admit you bought followers.
— Mark Keller (@vegasobie) June 29, 2012
Danny Sheridan really had all those spam bots that followed him on twitter going with this bag man stuff. How dare he lead them on like that
— John Porter (@JporterAU11) June 29, 2012
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@DrewFranklinKSR Is Danny Sheridan there at your USA Today meeting? Ask him how he got 350k followers in a day when no one reads newspapers
— Chris (@cleek109) June 28, 2012
The most powerful man in American sports, Roger Goodell has 276,000 followers. What are the chances he catches DS…I'd say 50/50…
— Ryan Haney (@ryanhaney) June 29, 2012
Sheridan insists that he has not bought any followers. He even tells one person that he is contemplating alerting the Department of Justice because of the accusations.
@SportsTalkwBo @ChrisVernonShow I don't buy them either Bo &am contacting the DOJ about group that said I did as they may want 2 investigate
— Danny Sheridan (@DannySheridan1) June 28, 2012
We’re sure Eric Holder will get right to that.
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