[dtsingletary]

Yes, it is. There are ways to build authentic engagement and attention. The only usable situation for this is for prototyping at scale: if youre software needed to stress test reading through a fan page with x number of fans or likes in order to understand how it works.

Otherwise it's no different than fixing your books, cheating on your taxes, modding your console so you can have better performance in leaderboards, etc. And activity like this will put a black mark against your startu for years to come.

[gailees]

By the volume of the demand for this, I was under the impression that a lot of startups were doing it and that it was commonplace for PR firms.