How much are Facebook fans or Twitter followers really worth?

A company called Syncapse recently tried to calculate the average value of a Facebook fan to a marketer, and came up with the amazingly precise amount of $136.38.

But how much are Facebook fans or Twitter followers really worth? I know a self-published guy who has something like 12,000 Twitter followers. I would guess he has not sold more than a thousand books, probably a lot less. But he spends his days following anyone and everyone, and I guess enough people follow him back that he has managed to accrue that many followers.

Or take the case of the guy who wrote Shut Up, I'm Talking: And Other Diplomacy Lessons I Learned in the Israeli Government--A Memoir. He started a Facebook fan page for the book called Shut Up I’m Talking. And got 700,000 fans. Most of whom have no idea that it’s actually a fan page for a book.

You can read an article in Ad Age that includes an interview with the author here and you can read his own essay about it here. He says “They were the sort of people, I soon discovered, who were also fans of such inane but popular Facebook fan pages as “Punching Things” and “I hate it when I get fingerprints all over my phone.” But each time one of them would become a fan of Shut Up, I’m Talking, their circle of Facebook friends would blindly do the same – causing its frighteningly viral spread.”