Twitter Bots Abound
September 23, 2014
Quartz grabs our attention with its headline, “Twitter Admits That as Many as 23 Million of Its Active Users Are Automated.” These accounts, which automatically request updates and may or may not also auto-post, include “users” like third-party data-display apps. Reporter Zachary M. Seward writes:
“The new disclosure was an attempt to clarify an earlier statement (pdf) that 14% of MAUs access the service outside of the official website and mobile apps, by using Twitter’s API. Twitter’s update today specifies that the 14% figure ‘included certain users who accessed Twitter through owned and operated applications.’ Those are likely TweetDeck and Twitter for Mac, which are favored by power tweeters but, for technical reasons, aren’t counted in many of the company’s official statistics. The company said only 11% of MAUs accessed Twitter from applications that the company doesn’t own, like Tweetbot or Flipboard.
“To be clear, automated accounts aren’t necessarily spam accounts, which according to Twitter make up less than 5% of MAUs. Bots can be useful, even essential, accounts for many Twitter users. But once they’re set up, they don’t usually have any humans behind them, which matters greatly to advertisers who are interested in reaching potential customers.”
Seward maintains that Twitter should be concerned for its advertisers (itself included), who may feel they are pouring ad dollars down a black hole. I’m sure they can work out some equitable fee structure(s). We wonder, though, what the implications are for high-value content that attracts interested readers.
Cynthia Murrell, September 23, 2014
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
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