Oct. 25 (UPI) — Twitter’s crackdown on bots, spam and fake accounts resulted in the loss of 9 million users in the third quarter, the company said Thursday.
The social media giant anticipated the loss after it started using better software to pinpoint the users in question or prevent them from signing up at all.
“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,” Twitter said in its quarterly filing.
Twitter’s user base is now 326 million, which, after two straight quarters of losses, puts it back at the level it was in early 2017. Twitter added new users, but it wiped out more bad users than it gained. But the daily active users grew 9 percent year over year. The daily users represent less than half of monthly users.
“We do see health [of the platform] as a growth vector over the long term,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said on an earnings call Thursday. “This is an extremely important initiative for us, not only for the experience of Twitter, but we believe the long-term growth of the platform.”
Twitter expects to lose several million more users in the fourth quarter. Some users were lost because Twitter allocated resources to data protection.
Twitter also reported a profit for the last four quarters, something it hasn’t achieved before.
Revenue growth was up 29 percent year-over-year and GAAP net income totaled $106 million. Video advertising accounts for half of the company’s ad revenue.
Twitter also addressed how it prepared for the upcoming midterm elections on Nov. 6 so users ideally see the best, most informed content first.
“Protecting the integrity of elections is another essential part of improving the health of the public conversation on Twitter,” Twitter said. “After launching the Ads Transparency Center in Q2, we made a number of additional updates in Q3 in preparation for upcoming elections, including provider clearer guidance around attributed activity.”
