1. Cristiano Ronaldo
Followers: 12.6 million Fake: 40% [More from Mashable: How to Make Money From YouTube] Inactive: 39% Good: 21% [More from Mashable: TweetDeck Updates Its Chrome and Web Apps] Adjusted Follower Count: 2.6 million
Photo courtesy @Cristiano
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Twitter has become one of the most powerful tools available for athletes, sports teams and leagues to connect with fans, improve their marketability and shape public perception. A single tweet sent out to millions of followers can become an instant viral hit or offer unprecedented access to the rarified air of pro sports. But how much online influence do teams and athletes really have, and how many of those followers are actually bogus accounts?
A new tool called Fakers from the London-based social media management company StatusPeople analyzes a sample of anyone's Twitter account to identify fake and inactive followers.
We ran some tests on prominent accounts from the sports world to see how many phony followers plague well-known personalities, teams and leagues. Our 12 picks are based on popularity, online notoriety and our own personal curiosity.
Important to note: The StatusPeople app pulls a sample size of just 500 followers, so isn't an exact science by any means. But it does provide some good insight and interesting food for thought.
Real Madrid soccer star Cristiano Ronaldo has the most followers of any sports figure on Twitter, with a small nation's worth of 12.6 million. But 40% of those followers are fake, according to StatusPeople -- a higher rate than any account we analyzed. Coupled with a 39% inactive rate, Ronaldo's following shrinks to a projected adjustment of just 2.6 million.
The big winner in our tests? Former Major League Baseball star Jose Canseco. He's infamous on Twitter for his rants against "haters" and nonsensical musings, which many suspect are a simple publicity stunt. But Canseco's following is just 7% fake -- by far the lowest number of everyone we looked at. Balanced out by an inactive follower rate of 36%, Canseco is still the only account we analyzed who registered more than 50% "good" followers (he boasts 57%).
Click through the gallery above for a look at how inflated some big-name sports accounts may actually be. Curious about someone who isn't on the list? Run their numbers yourself and let us know what you find in the comments.
This story originally published on Mashable here.