Twitter had a fantastic Q2 this year, with revenues up and monthly active users (MAUs) up 24% to a record of 271 million users. Yesterday however the social media giant disclosed the fact that 8.5% of MAUs were in fact accounts that aren’t updated manually.* These accounts use third party apps to push out Tweets without any discernible additional user-initiated action.
* NOTE – This information has been clarified to us and changed to be an accurate depiction. The automatic non-initiated numbers include those using readers and apps that pull information without user prompts, not only automated third party Tweeting. It should be noted that while these accounts pull or push without initiation it does not mean that they are in fact bots or spam accounts.
So this is a terrible sign for Twitter, right? Well, not really. Just because these accounts are performing actions that aren’t initiated, it doesn’t mean they are spam. Many publications simply push news out via Twitter, something that is automatically updated when an article is published. Additionally this number includes those users that may have installed something like a Flipboard that updates automatically upon powering on.
Of the overall 271 millions monthly active users, these non user-initiated accounts add up to 23 million users. According to the Twitter spam accounts in the filling, the estimated spam accounts make up less than 5% of the MAUs.
For more information, see the official SEC filling.
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