Did Brandi Glanville Buy Her Twitter Followers? 'She's Desperate To Reach LeAnn Rimes,' Says Source

Brandi Glanville has had a sudden spike in the amount of followers she has on Twitter and according to critics, there's one explanation for the explosion of interest: The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star is trying to reach her arch nemesis, LeAnn Rimes.

Glanville, 40, has acquired more than 45,843 followers since May 6, but tellingly, the increase in her fans has been steady every day during that period -- including weekends.

"Brandi's followers increase by a minimum of 300 people every day and occasionally as much as 800," one source told RadarOnline.com.

"It's clear that she's been buying about 500 followers on average per day over the last three months and using robot followers to increase her numbers."

A website specializing in social media statistics and metrics, Socialbakers, charts celebrities. The graph below shows Glanville's ascent over three months, from 365,421 followers to 411,264.

As RadarOnline.com has previously noted, typically Twitter users can gain a large number of followers if they in turn follow a large number back.

But the outspoken reality star has only increased the number of people she follows over the same three months period by 25 — nowhere near the followers she has gained!

What's more, a large portion of the new followers have the nondescript and generic profile photo of an egg and have no followers themselves, as “Twitter bots” usually don’t.

In an apparent preemptive strike against critics, Brandi took to Twitter on July 24 and wrote: "If u rock an "egg" and no history or story I will block u- if u have a second and a story #bringit."

One critic told RadarOnline.com: "Brandi is desperate to reach LeAnn Rimes and I would be surprised if she is engineering this whole thing so she can claim the "status" over here. It's crazy."

She's still got a journey to go: LeAnn -- who is married to Glanville's ex-husband Eddie Cibrian -- had 476,758 followers as of Monday afternoon.