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Facebook is now the world\'s fourth-most visited website.An Australian online marketing company is selling friends and fans to Facebook members.

Who says you can't buy friends? An Australian online marketing company is selling friends and fans to Facebook members after offering a similar service to Twitter users.

Advertising², marketing and promoting company uSocial (usocial.net) said it was targeting social networking sites because of their huge advertising potential.

"Facebook is an extremely effective marketing tool," Leon Hill, uSocial CEO, said in a statement.

"The simple fact is that with a large following on Facebook, you have an instant and targeted group of people you can contact and promote whatever it is you want to promote," he added.

"The only problem is that it can be extremely difficult to achieve such a following, which is where we come in.

The company offers packages for Facebook, the world's number one social networking site, that start at 1,000 friends up to 10,000 friends at costs ranging from $177 to $1,167.

"All we do is send them a welcome message or friend request from the client. If they decide to go ahead and add that person as a friend or a fan then they will; if not, then they won't," Hill told Australian media.

Facebook is now the world's fourth-most visited website.

The company, which counts venture capitalist Peter Thiel, Accel Partners, Microsoft Corp and Russian Internet investment firm Digital Sky Technologies among its investors³, has more than 250 million registered users.

But uSocial's packages are not without controversy⁴.

According to some Australian websites, Twitter tried to shut uSocial down, accusing it of spamming members, while the Los Angeles Times reported that Digg.com, a website where people vote for their top news stories or websites, has also tried to shut down uSocial because it sells votes.

谁说朋友不能买？澳大利亚一家网络营销公司目前正在向Facebook用户出售“好友”和“粉丝”。之前该公司曾向Twitter用户提供过类似服务。

uSocial 广告、市场和营销公司(usocial.net)称，由于社交网站蕴藏着巨大的广告潜力，他们正将目光瞄准这一领域。

uSocial公司首席执行官利昂•希尔在一份声明中称：“Facebook是一种非常有效的营销手段。”

他说：“最简单的事实是，如果你在Facebook上拥有大批追随者，你就可得到一批即时的目标客户群，你可以随时联系这些人，推销任何产品。”

“唯一的问题是，拥有这么多追随者是一件很难的事，而这也正是我们的切入点。”

该公司向Facebook用户提供了朋友数量从一千至一万名不等的各档套餐，价格则从177美元至1167美元不等。Facebook是全球第一大社交网站。

希尔在接受澳大利亚媒体采访时说：“我们所做的事情就是代表客户发送欢迎信息或好友邀请。收到邀请的人可以自行决定是否加此人为好友或粉丝。”

目前Facebook是全球第四大用户访问量最高的网站。

Facebook目前拥有超过2.5亿的注册用户，其风险投资商包括皮特•泰尔、Accel合伙公司、微软公司以及俄罗斯互联网投资公司数字天空技术公司。

但uSocial提供的卖朋友服务也引发了争议。

据澳大利亚一些网站报道，Twitter曾试图屏蔽uSocial，原因是它向用户发送垃圾信息。《洛杉矶时报》报道称，新闻及新闻投票网Digg.com也曾因uSocial出售投票而对其进行屏蔽。

Vocabulary:

spam:to send (a message) indiscriminately to multiple mailing lists, individuals, or newsgroups.（兜售信息，发送垃圾信息）