看到这个标题，你是不是联想到了某款网络游戏？其实不然，今天我们要说的是一个网络新词——“僵尸粉(zombie fan)”。看完文章后顺便记得检查下自己有多少僵尸粉哦。

Attack of the zombies
微博“僵尸粉”大战网络

Micro bloggers: have you ever compared the number of fans on your Sina Weibo or Tencent micro blog with those of your friends?
微博博主们：你曾和好友比过各自新浪或腾讯微博上的粉丝数吗？

Don't imagine you have more fans just because your number is bigger–some of them might be "zombie fans", or fake followers.
别单凭数量多这点就以为自己的粉丝多——他们中的一些可能是“僵尸粉”，也就是虚假粉丝。

That's what Chen Chuanliang, creator of Lejian Network, found when he bet against his friend several months ago.
这是数月前，乐荐网络创始人陈传亮在和朋友打赌获胜时发现的。

Chen, who used to do search and data mining for Microsoft Asia Research Institute, then ran a statistical analysis and screened all the null accounts among his fans.
随后，曾在微软亚洲研究院从事搜索和数据挖掘研究工作的陈传亮通过统计分析，将粉丝中的那些无效帐号全部屏蔽掉。

Not only did he find that he had more real micro blog followers than his friend, he also discovered that there were far more null micro blog accounts than he had imagined.
他不仅发现自己在微博上真实粉丝的数量比朋友多之外，还发现“空头微博账号”的数量远远超过自己的想象。

Later Chen randomly picked 10 celebrity users on Sina Weibo and analyzed their statistics. He found that the average number of fake fans of those celebrities users had reached about 17 percent.
随后，陈传亮随机选取了10位通过实名认证的新浪微博名人，并对他们的相关统计数据进行分析。他发现这些名人博主平均每人约有17%左右的虚假粉丝。

Kai-Fu Lee, the former CEO of Google China, who's on Chen's list of research, posted a message on his micro blog after he found out that he had more than 1 million fake fans (out of about 5 million), joking "I have 1 million zombie fans? If united, we can finally defeat those plants."
登上陈传亮研究名单的谷歌中国前CEO李开复，在得知自己所拥有的500多万粉丝中有100多万是虚假粉丝后，发表了一条微博调侃道：“我有100万个僵尸粉？如果团结起来，我们肯定可以打败那些植物。”

According to a report by S Weekly in March, zombie fans on micro blogs are defined as invalid accounts signed up by network companies for the purpose of increasing the number of fans for certain users, especially celebrity ones, and getting them more attention.
根据三月份《南都周刊》的一份报告显示，微博上的僵尸粉就是网络公司用来提高特定用户(尤其是名人博主)粉丝数量，为其吸引更多关注而注册的无效帐号。

And this kind of fake followers are also very much alive on Western social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.
而此类的虚假粉丝在推特和脸谱这样的西方社交网站上也是异常活跃。

The Financial Times reported in August, that Newt Gingrich, a Republican candidate in the US presidential election, bought about 80 percent of his 1.3 million Twitter followers and tried to use them as leverage in his campaign.
《金融时报》八月份报道称，美国总统大选共和党候选人纽特.金里奇130万推特粉丝中有80%是买来的，并想通过他们在选举中获得影响力。

There was often speculation because Gingrich's numbers were rather inflated compared to other candidates such as Sarah Palin (with about 620,000 followers) and Mitt Romney (with 64,000 followers).
对于金里奇粉丝数量的怀疑从来不绝于耳。因为相比于其他候选人如萨拉.佩林(大约62万粉丝)和米特.罗姆尼（6.4万粉丝），金里奇的就显得过于有水分了。

Now there are also business deals through which users can get hundreds of thousands of fans for their micro blog accounts, by paying a small amount of money.
如今，博主们可以通过交易手段来为自己的微博账号增加成千上万的粉丝，而只需花费少量的一笔钱。

"We have been working to find ways to block or delete those invalid accounts," Mao Taotao, a spokesperson for Sina Weibo told S Weekly.
“我们一直致力于寻找屏蔽或删除无效帐号的方法。”新浪微博发言人毛涛涛(音译)告诉《南都周刊》。

"But as the fake accounts evolve so fast, they're going to be here for a while."
“但由于虚假帐号发展太快了，所以它们短时间内还将继续存在。”

Like Gingrich's example, an excessively large number of followers doesn't necessarily mean much unless a user has influence to back it up.
就像金里奇的事例一样，庞大的粉丝数量并不能说明什么，除非博主有足够大的影响力做后盾。

Otherwise, the messages might fall on deaf ears just because of those fake fans.
否则，因为粉丝都是虚假的，那些微博上的信息就不会有人理睬。所以，最后一条建议是：下次你看见微博页面右上角提示新的好友信息时，别太兴奋哦。