Fake tweets by 'socialbot' fool hundreds of followers - tech - 23 March 2011 - New Scientist

A new Turing quiz (not quite a Turing Test)?…  (Via ACM TechNews)

THREE anonymous teams have let loose software that pretends to be human, and used it to manipulate a group of Twitter users.

Over a two-week period, the three "socialbots" were able to integrate themselves into the group, and gained close to 250 followers between them. They received more than 240 responses to the tweets they sent.

This sinister-sounding effort was in fact part of Socialbots 2011, a competition designed to test whether bots can be used to alter the structure of a social network.

Fake tweets by 'socialbot' fool hundreds of followers - tech - 23 March 2011 - New Scientist