The New Wave of Celeb Hackers

"And the hackers gonna hack hack hack hack hack"

Yeah, I couldn't help but get Taylor Swift's "Shake It Off" song stuck in my head again today!

Poor Taylor was hacked on Instagram and Twitter yesterday
!  Of course, the social media accounts of stars being hacked is nothing new.  But Taylor just happens to be one of the most-followed celebs in the social media world, so you can bet her fans noticed when something was fishy about her account!

And that leads me to what might be the most interesting point about this celeb-hacking: its purpose.  Many times, hackers have done so to post a lewd photograph or start a juicy rumor or something similar.  But not this time.  No, this hacker seemed to mainly be after one thing: followers. Yeah, followers!!

The hacker posted a tweet as though it was from Taylor telling her fans to follow his actual Twitter account.  And later, he asked them to do the same for a supposed friend.  What a crazy thing to do to gain some social media followers!!  And while most of Taylor's followers recognized the hacker and told him to take a hike, a few had a different plan.  They messaged Taylor's account (while the hacker was on it) and asked him to follow them from Taylor's account!  

This "follow-for-a-follow" type of world is crazy and the things people do to elicit social media followers are just as nuts.  What's the craziest thing you've heard of someone doing to get social media followers?

When It's Great To Get Hacked!

 

The old adage says all press is good press. That played true last week for Burger King. The fast food royalty's Twitter account was hacked by jokesters who changed its header photo to its arch nemesis's golden arches and claimed the company had been acquired by McDonald's.

 

At this news, you'd probably think: Sound the alarm! Social Media catastrophe!

 

But the real results of the hack were quite the opposite.

 

Because of the snafu, @BurgerKing acquired 30,000 new followers in a single day, saw a 300% increase in conversations and was mentioned in 450,000 Tweets!

 

The profile ended up being suspended until Twitter restored the true Burger King access, but all in all BK keeps the new followers and the publicity.

 

Of course, some of the conversation and mentions were a bit disparaging toward Burger King. This is to be expected. To balance that though, many tweets were sympathetic, and now @BurgerKing gets the added impressions of all the new followers obtained from the hack.

What do you think, is getting hacked worth it?