Twitter has 229 million daily users, but admits mistakes in counting

Twitter has acknowledged that, for at least the past three years, it has inflated its active user numbers. However, the company claims that this is a counting error, and not a deliberate strategy to overestimate the value of the company.

Twitter’s counting system has attributed to the company in the last three years between 1.4 and 1.9 million more users than it actually had

As explained in the presentation of the results of the first quarter of 2022, Twitter launched in March 2019 a counting mechanism that counts as two different users what is actually the same user who has several open profiles.

Are metric, much higher than the real ones, were the ones that Twitter presented to advertisers with the aim of making them see how many potential users they were targeting. And, to the extent that advertising investment is the basis of Twitter’s business, this counting mechanism was very favorable to the company.

As Twitter has acknowledged, this counting system has attributed to the social network between 1.4 and 1.9 million more users than it actually had. Now, once the accounting mechanism has been adjusted, Twitter claims to have ended the first quarter of this year with a total of 229 million active users per day. That is 15.9% more than in the same quarter last year, when it had 199 million users.

User growth so far this year has been more pronounced outside the United States than in the country itself. Over there users have grown by 6.4% in the last yearwhile in the rest of the world growth has been an average of 18.1%.

The company, which this week was bought by Elon Musk, says that its numbers are growing much faster than expected. In the first quarter of 2022, its profits amounted to 513 million dollars.

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