Questions regarding faking a user-base for new sites?

I think the phrase "fake content" pretty well sums it up.

Fake users are not community users - and real users will resent / bail / never sign up again if they smell anything that resembles chicanery. Can't blame them - who wants their name and reputation to be associated with a lie?

If your offerings value proposition cannot be demonstrated without fake data, then you have a core problem that you need to address. Either get "real content" or redesign to address a smaller community at first.

EDIT:

Since there are references to reddit - here is an interesting venturebeat article and hackernews thread on the topic. There is a fine line between "fake" & "curated" communities. Terms like "priming" are used, but one wonders if stackoverflow needed to be seeded with bogus accounts / questions just to prove its usefulness. I think not - and that is the difference between a offering that immediately proves its value and one that requires fake accounts to show value. Both approaches have their risks - and successes. Choose wisely.

To answer the question is it a common solution, I have no doubt many sites and services do do this. Indeed their are a raft of companies that actually offer setting up fake or puppet accounts on your behalf.

Should you do this, that's a different question you have 3 distrinct areas to think about; Legal, moral, return

• Legal: Is it actually legal in your country/server country/target country to create fake personas for example here in the UK the creation of fake personas is consider a form of fraudulent advertising and could see you being investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority. Other countries have similar rules.
• Moral: Would you do business with a company that tricks it's customers? Is it right to lie to your customers and what would be the consequences if you were found out for your reputation?
• Return: Does it make financial sense to do this? Would a better return be to develop actual customers and build up your brand. What would be the effect on the return if caught?

Put another way fake profiles are a cheap trick that won't help build a community, their use would be strictly limited and to do them in such a way as to not be obviously fake requires significant investment in time that could be spent actually building a community with real people.

Yes i also agree that, fake users will not at all connect with the communities if they will know that the account is fake, even we also do the same, it is a trick for marketing as i think what's your thinking...