• Login
  • Register
The Zimbabwe Sentinel
Advertisement
  • Home (new)
  • Local News
    • Politics
    • Economy
    • Local Government
  • Business
  • Lifestyle
  • Tech
  • Sports
  • Opinions
  • Community Focus
  • Civil Society
    • Citizen Files
    • Social Welfare
    • Gender
  • Gallery
No Result
View All Result
  • Home (new)
  • Local News
    • Politics
    • Economy
    • Local Government
  • Business
  • Lifestyle
  • Tech
  • Sports
  • Opinions
  • Community Focus
  • Civil Society
    • Citizen Files
    • Social Welfare
    • Gender
  • Gallery
No Result
View All Result
The Zimbabwe Sentinel
No Result
View All Result
Home Tech

Twitter loses 9 million users amid bot crackdown

zimsentinel by zimsentinel
October 30, 2018
in Tech, Uncategorized
0
Twitter loses 9 million users amid bot crackdown
1
SHARES
40
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter


By Jacob Kastrenakes
Twitter’s monthly user count took another hit last quarter, diving by 9 million amid an ongoing crackdown meant to rid the platform of bots, spam, and other problematic accounts. The company said this morning that its monthly user base fell to 326 million from from 335 million the prior quarter, marking the second quarter in a row of declines.

The decline wasn’t unexpected. Twitter said last month that it had begun wiping out bad accounts far more rapidly. And the company warned that it could lose “mid-single-digit millions” more in the coming months, due to new technology that helped spot bad actors and prevent them from getting on the platform in the first place. Evidently, Twitter ended up wiping out more bad accounts than it added real accounts.
“We do see health [of the platform] as a growth vector over the long term,” Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO, said during a call with investors this morning. “This is an extremely important initiative to us, not only for the experience of Twitter, but we believe the long-term growth of the platform.”

Cleaning out these accounts ought to lead to a better overall service. But for the time being, the adjusted figures illustrate how poorly Twitter has been growing. Not only has it lost users this year, its total user count is back to where it was at the start of 2017. For comparison, Facebook added 38 million monthly users just last quarter.
Twitter expects the user decline to continue, too. The company says it expects another “mid-single-digit millions” drop next quarter, though it doesn’t attribute the whole thing to its bot crackdown. Some of it is because of the company dropping SMS deals with carriers, and some of it is because of Twitter’s “decision to allocate resources towards GDPR.”

Ultimately though, if you’re a Twitter user, you want Twitter’s efforts in this space to succeed. Twitter believes it’s made “meaningful progress improving the health of the public conversation” on its site; and it sees a big success in the fact that its new signups have actually dropped by 20 percent from last quarter, because it’s added new verification requirements.
“In Q3, we made progress preventing spammy or suspicious new account creation by requiring new accounts to confirm either an email address or phone number when they sign up to Twitter, and we improved the detection and removal of previously banned accounts who attempt to evade suspension by creating new accounts,” the company writes in its quarterly filing.

The platform’s health is one of Twitter’s “highest priority areas,” the company says. “We will continue our efforts to remove spammy and suspicious accounts from the platform and to prevent their creation in service of a healthier public conversation.”

Twitter tries to put the user decline in context by noting that the accounts it’s losing are not good for the platform. But Twitter had been counting those accounts as users before now, and so it has to deal with the fact that in the public’s eyes, growth is going in the wrong direction.

There was one relative bright spot when it came to user growth: daily active users continue to grow. Twitter still won’t say exactly how many daily users it has, but it says the number is up 9 percent year over year. Daily user growth has, however, slowed — Twitter saw 14 percent growth this quarter last year. Daily users represent “less than half” of monthly users, the company said on its earnings call.

Twitter also continued to turn a profit, marking one full year of profitability. That’s something the company has never done before, since these are also the first four quarters it’s turned a profit period.
Source: www.theverge.com

Previous Post

The nation needs Dialogue: Chamisa

Next Post

Trump tweets he only has one ‘seldom used’ cellphone, via his iPhone

Next Post
Trump tweets he only has one ‘seldom used’ cellphone, via his iPhone

Trump tweets he only has one ‘seldom used’ cellphone, via his iPhone

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Recent News

Lockdown- threat to mental health.

Lockdown- threat to mental health.

January 18, 2021
Zim teenager using taekwondo to fight child marriage

Zim teenager using taekwondo to fight child marriage

January 18, 2021
Zimbabwe: Journalists dogged by poor wages, harassment

Zimbabwe: Journalists dogged by poor wages, harassment

January 11, 2021
The Zimbabwe Sentinel

The Zimbabwe Sentinel, always providing an alternative view to news on the Zimbabwean market

Follow Us

Browse by Category

  • Analysis
  • Blogs
  • Business
  • Citizen Files
  • Civil society
  • Community Focus
  • Culture
  • Economy
  • Entertainment
  • Gender
  • Investigative Reporting
  • Lifestyle
  • Local Government
  • News
  • Opinion
  • Opinion & Analysis
  • Politics
  • social
  • Social Welfare
  • Sport & Culture
  • Tech
  • Uncategorized
  • Vacancies
  • World
Lockdown- threat to mental health.

Lockdown- threat to mental health.

January 18, 2021
Zim teenager using taekwondo to fight child marriage

Zim teenager using taekwondo to fight child marriage

January 18, 2021
  • Local News
  • Business
  • Opinion & Analysis
  • Citizen Files
  • Lifestyle
  • Sport & Culture
  • Tech

© 2018 - 2019 ZimSentinal News

No Result
View All Result

© 2018 - 2019 ZimSentinal News