Twitter miscounted its daily users for 3 years straight

Twitter miscounted its daily users for 3 years straight
FILE PHOTO: The Twitter app is seen on a smartphone in this illustration taken July 13, 2021. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo

A few days ago, our team had a heated internal math debate over a story. Well, it turns out that Twitter could have a few more of these debates themselves. For three years straight, Twitter miscounted its amount of daily users, overcounting by up to 1.9 million users each quarter. The good news is that it isn’t too huge of a deal, considering the company has around 230 million daily users.

The error would be embarrassing enough alone, but this is actually the second time they’ve done this. Fool us once, shame on us; fool us twice, get bought out for US$44 billion, it seems.

Key comments:

“We have performed an internal review of a sample of accounts and estimate that the average of false or spam accounts during the first quarter of 2022 represented fewer than 5% of our [daily active users metric] during the quarter,” said Twitter in its quarterly report.

Referring to its recent US$44 billion buyout by Elon Musk, Twitter also said, “Given the pending acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk, we will not be providing any forward looking guidance, and are withdrawing all previously provided goals and outlook.”