With benefits of lots of followers, potential internet celebrity fame and hundreds of pop-up notifications a day, anonymous social media accounts seem to have become all the rage. But for one lucky USC student, his anonymous twitter account has become both a way of life and a source of income.
Perry Davis, a second-year GSCOM and marketing student at USC, has been running an anonymous twitter account since January 2013. The “Cause We’re Classy” (@CauseWereClassy) account posts at least once a day and seems to average a large amount of retweets and favorites.
“It started as an account just between me and a couple of my close friends,” Davis said. “We all wanted to combine and make an anonymous twitter account famous, but we had many failed attempts at doing so for a few weeks.”
Davis found the inspiration for @CauseWereClassy after seeing another similar account on Twitter. He amassed 2,000 followers in the first month, 12,000 followers in two and a half months and 127,500 followers after his first year.
“I haven’t looked back since,” he said. “I could never have imagined it would turn out like this.”
The dream of hundreds of thousands of followers isn’t far from the truth for Davis. With over 200,000 followers on Twitter, he has achieved his goal of online celebrity.
“My followers range from all over the country. About 85 percent of followers are from the United States, with the largest populations being from Kansas, South Carolina and North Carolina,” Davis said.
Even companies have reached out to Davis to offer incentives and sponsorships because of the amount of reach his account gets. He is sponsored by various companies to tweet out his opinions and offer giveaways and other gifts to his followers. He is currently working with Southern Shirt, American Island Co. and Luxley & Bernard.
“Many brands have emailed me concerning promotional purchases,” Davis said. “They seek retweets, followers and a larger customer base.”
It’s not just all retweets and giveaways for Davis, however. The USC student offers a lot of unique tweets from his own imagination, as well as sourced tweets that come from Tumblr.
The account has become a way of life for Davis, and he sees it as his own business venture — one that he takes very seriously.
“I love how running the account has turned into a miniature entrepreneurship project for me. That is why I am still involved in the account today,” he said. “I would have sold it long ago had business opportunities not presented themselves.”
The Twitter-anonymous life can be a lot to handle for Davis, who is the sole runner of the Twitter account.
“My favorite part about running the account is that with over 200,000 followers, I will always be able to relate to and or inspire someone,” Davis said.