For a few hundred bucks, you can buy tens of thousands of Twitter followers from Websites like FanMeNow.com and BuyTwitterFollow.com.

The followers aren't necessarily real Twitter users, however.

As reported in The New York Times, for as little as a penny a piece you can buy “generated” followers (they're Twitter accounts that are inactive or that have been created by bots).
London-based social media management company StatusPeople estimates that 70 percent of President Obama's 19 million followers are generated.
Mitt Romney and Lady Gaga have also been accused of buying generated followers.
Twitter abets the practice in part because it doesn't require users to approve followers.