Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) recently stated that 8.5% of the total accounts are bot accounts, which are used to deliver completely stupid nonsense and sudden shocking news ranging from sale to earthquakes. Such accounts on are a cause of concern for the micro-blogging site, which depends largely upon advertisement revenue.
Cause of concern for advertisers, investors
These bot accounts do not show the ads displayed by Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR), and advertisers are concerned about that, which gives enough reason to investors and shareholders to be concerned as well.
Twitter has recognized that the situation is a cause of concern. If 23% of the tweets are posted by the bots that mean these 23 million users never visit the Twitter account, and do not see any advertisement posted by Twitter. The company earns around 90% of its revenue from advertisement, and in this case it does not earn a penny from 23 million accounts. Twitter has said that the numbers filed with the SEC are just guesstimates, and the number of automated accounts could be more than this according to experts.
The social micro-blogging site said to Engadget and Quartz that these 8.5% of the accounts have contacted the servers automatically for regular updates, which can be inclusive of Twitter’s own feeds, and the details are given in the SEC filing by Twitter.
Clarifies previous statement
Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) did acknowledge that its user base is increasing, but not every account is a human account, and around 23 million tweets are not posted by the flesh and blood humans. There are some automated accounts that deliver reasonable news and have their importance.
The latest update from Twitter clarifies the previous statement, where the company said that 14% of the MAU access services beyond the official website and mobile apps by using Twitter API. In the latest update the company said that 14% “included certain users who accessed Twitter through owned and operated applications.”
Twitter said that only around 11% of the Monthly average users signed into Twitter from applications such as Tweetbots or Flipboard, that are not owned by the company. All automated accounts are not spam accounts and constitute less than 5% of the monthly average users.
