The big talking point among wine hacks this week was that Christian Eedes has bought winemag.co.za. The motivation was clearly to broaden his church. As his press release notes “Winemag.co.za has around 13 000 unique users and 40 000 page impressions per month (2013 fourth quarter averages, Google Analytics). The Wine magazine Facebook page currently has over 2 500 “likes” and the @WINEmag Twitter handle has close to 4 900 followers.”

But how many of these twits are real? StatusPeople reckon that 3% are fakes and 41% are inactive accounts which means he bought 2744 live followers, presumably some – if not all – among the 3097 who already follow his excellent @christianeedes. Should Christian ask for a refund?

While just over half may sound poor odds, no fewer than 2/3 of the followers of the notorious whalecottage social stinkpot are fakes. In fact his genuine followers are overshadowed by his inactives. Yet another cetacean scandal. Surely beaching can only be a matter of time?

Declaration: 2% of my own twits are fakes according to StatusPeople.