Ever get the feeling the profiles you read on MySpace are faked?   More and more, they are being faked in order to generate viral marketing results; I read about one case in Read/Write/Web today.  Seems like the results are pretty good- but the end does not necessarily justify the means.

So what’s the formula?

Create a campaign drawing upon a number of social networks such as youtube, myspace, flickr, etc.  Seed the sites with what appears to be real profiles and real photos, but are faked.   I find this part of the post revealing.

"…..On the strategy of the social network campaign, Niccolò said:

"Our strategy was to focus on viral seeding and social networking, no traditional media adv online. I have no idea of the exact number of people going from Social Networks to Website [...] because we worked with a lot of social networks.

More than quantity, what I like to point is the quality of the relationship between users and Campari. Client is very happy about the close relationship between the brand and the users.

What I like is that we created a community of people that we can further talk about red passion."

Some people might argue about the quality of the community - because the profile of "Red Passion" (the 28 year old Italian woman) is fake. How can you have a real social networking community around a fake, marketing-driven user profile?

That’s what I’m wondering too…..as people become more saturated with social networking the bar will be raised….and it already is ….. according to the comments on the Read/Write/Web post (comment 1) (comment 2)