Twitter: nearly 23 million active accounts are “robots” – The Digital

With 271 million monthly active users at last count, Twitter is doing quite well, since its audience is growing. But is it really the audience as we understand it? According to documents filed with the SEC, all connections are not the result of human action.
Rather quiet on the issue so far, Twitter said in its latest report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission that “ [its] actions are also affected by third-party applications that automatically contact [its] servers for regular updates without involving the user action” , and “this activity can cause the system to count users associated with such applications as active or the day during which such contacts occur “.

In practice this means that a significant number Account operates independently. Suffice to say that it is not of people but of bots . Twitter has also updated its measurement tools to distinguish between “real” connections to those made by a program. According to the microblogging site, 11% of “active users” are passed by “ party applications ” to access Twitter, while “active users” proportion who used a third-party application that may have automatically connected to servers for regular updates with no sign of human activity may not exceed 8.5%. 23 million members – still

Who are the members.? They are posting messages? Yes, and to locate them is simple: they are generally automated information services. Some point earthquakes, others … make themselves useful in their own way.

 
 

Also nice as they are, these “users” but also raise a question: Can Twitter use its number of active users as an indication of its progress? The stock market has welcomed the latest figures on the subject, but it was clear that these 271 million users are not necessarily 271 million consumers? Companies have accounts – they use to communicate to the 271 million members of the service – and some individuals also have several. If we also take into account the unknown that is the exact number of non-human members, it becomes very difficult to know who to address the tweets …