You pose and take a good selfie or you are dining in a fancy restaurant and wouldn’t miss taking an Instagramable photo on your ordered dish. After editing and finding the right filter plus typing the perfect caption matched by multiple popular related hashtags, you post it and wait for hundreds of likes to pour on your photo.

But seconds, minutes, hours passed, and you only got one to two likes from accounts you don’t even know. You think deeply and ask yourself, did you post at the wrong time? Is your photo not cute or good enough for people to double tap it and give it a little love?

We are all in this situation. You take a good photo, create a catchy caption, post it, and then no love from other users. How you wish there is a vending machine that could just instantly give you the likes you need.

Surprisingly, there is.

If you are in Moscow, you’ll see a  couple of vending machines that sell Instagram likes. You can get 100 Instagram likes for as low as 50 Russian rubles or 8 cents. Or if you want to increase your followers, 100 followers is 100 Russian rubles or $1.75.

Here is a video on how the Instagram Likes Vending Machine works.

Instagram Likes Vending Machines

According to a Russian tech news website vc.ru, the vending machines are a product of a company called Snatap. Snatap is part of a bigger company called Like. This company is owned by Nazir Yusifov and Ayaz Shabutdinov.

Since buying Instagram likes is very common and also highly discouraged by Instagram, Yusifov immediately claimed that what their machines are doing is not illegal. The likes that they are selling are not fake and they are not violating any of the legal terms of Instagram.

According to him, their likes came from real people from accounts they have created. They are not bots like the usual tactics of buying Instagram followers from bot farms. He insisted that these vending machines are completely legal.

They launched their first machine in November 2016 in St. Petersburg. Up until then, they continue to create more and spread the business around Moscow and other locations.

But since the vending machines offer a unique service that is very tempting to Instagram users, it became viral. This leads the company to install more machines on malls or sell it to individuals.

Since it is not actually the machine but the software inside, it is easy to sell it to others. Setting it up in the mall will cost you 420,000 Russian rubles which is equivalent to $7,372. Whilst buying the software can be bought separately for $300 with 5 cents monthly payment.

You will be surprised that the machine or the software are not producing the likes. The actual process of gathering likes is being outsourced from another company. This company asks people to like photos in exchange for money.

The vending machines are very popular. There are 20 machines all over Russia with 20 to 50 customers per day. In Russia, technology is fully developed. This is why a demand for domestic electronics is highly satisfied.

Flowers For Rent

This social media infrastructure is not the first time in Russia. In fact, an Instagrammable flower for rent was also invented. The public were both saddened and amused by the idea of renting Instagrammable flowers. But it was widely promoted on Instagram especially during the Celebration of International Women’s Day on March 8.

Why it was both amusing and saddening?

Well, the concept of flower for rent is that you can contact them to send flowers for you so you can take an Instagramamble photo of it and make it look like someone sent it to you. This is a good topic discussion on social media and real life. Aside from that, you can upgrade your order by renting a BMW to deliver the flowers for you or someone and have a handsome person to send it to you. Thus the #flowersforrent #carforrent #boyfriendforrent.

The public reactions are mixed from mockery and disbelief. But many dwell on the fact of people’s sadness in this modern condition. People are investing money just to maintain a #lifegoals image in their Instagram account.

The Instagram likes vending machine and flower for rent is just the tip of the iceberg. The digital market is fast to react in these cases, but the reality is about Moscow startup scene that is blooming so fast.

Moscow startup scene may be blooming in a depressing manner as they produce this kind of products, but these products are attracting talents and money for the industry.

According to Yusifov, they are now considering putting these Instagram Like Vending Machines in Germany, Poland, and the USA. They are also in the process of certifying the product so it can be produced and set up in other countries.

Other tactics of buying likes

Aside from these vending machines, buying likes have been in the digital world for a quite a long time now. There are services who offer buying Instagram likes and followers – one is from using fake accounts and the other is from using bots.

• Using fake accounts

These fake accounts will follow your account. In an instant, you will get 1000 followers or more. But these fake accounts are producing a negative effect on your business. Instead of getting higher engagement because of the high number of following, it lowers your interactions and wastes your money.

Since they are fake accounts you don’t expect to have real interactions with them. Furthermore, they are not real people so they can’t buy your product or promote them in real life. Instagram is also deleting fake accounts so the money you invested in buying fake accounts will be wasted in the long run.

• Using Instagram bots

Bots will follow real accounts on your behalf in the hope that they will follow your account back. And once they follow you back, these bots will unfollow they account to ensure that you have a good following and follower ratio.

They also randomly like and comment posts from real people. While this process seems a good idea, it posts a great disaster on your image. Why? Since they are randomly liking and commenting on posts, they might comment on an image that is opposite your brand’s vision. Or they might say inappropriate things on a certain post.

We all wanted to have more likes and engagements on every social media post that we do. But having that kind of engagement is not easy to do that is why many of us resort to these tactics. However, instead of doing us good, sometimes these tactics backfire. So if you really need a higher number of likes and engagement better do it organically or if you are into these vending machines, think about it very well before giving it a go.

 

Date: December 7, 2018 / Categories: Follower Tactics, Interesting, Like Tactics, / Author: Rich Drees