Quality or Quantity? Strategies to gain online followers.

Until this afternoon I was completely unaware that you could actually buy Twitter followers or Facebook fans to "like" whatever it is you are touting online. I came across this controversial discussion on this website, and I was truly in awe of the fact that people actually buy friends. I mean, come on. Is this really just some rigged popularity contest?

From one perspective, makes sense. We, as a society, tend to dwell on numbers. And we look to them to help us determine what success looks like, either through a statistic, salary figure, or even a ranking. If you see a company or person's page has a lot of fans or followers, you might imply that "x number of people can't be wrong," and with this stamp of legitimacy to support you, become a fan/follower as well. A safety in numbers kind of thing. But would you have made the same decision if there were only a few fans? Or if you found out that most of the fans were paid for and not actual supporters in their own right?

The question becomes what is the best strategy: go for numbers that will attract more attention? Or go with the slow route and build up true fans over time? There are probably a lot of factors at play when a company decides to pay for supporters, but isn't one of the benefits of doing things online the transparency of it all?