As IPO Nears, Do Twitter's Active User Claims Add Up? 73
netbuzz writes "With Twitter's IPO looming, an independent developer who is intimately familiar with the makeup and behavior of the site's users says his analysis of 1 million random accounts does not support the company's claims of 215 million active monthly users and 100 million active daily users. In fact, Si Dawson, who until March ran Twit Cleaner, a popular app used to weed deadwood and spammers from Twitter accounts, puts those numbers at 112 million and 48 million, respectively, or about half of what Twitter claims."
Re:importance (Score:2, Insightful)
No clue... the only person I know that uses twitter is my brother and he only tweets about silly things his wife does because he knows it annoys her. Oops, she tripped up the stairs. Oops, she put her shirt on wrong side out. Oops, she dropped her lipstick and it went in the toilet.
Not that relevant anyway (Score:4, Insightful)
I read stuff at twitter almost everyday and I don't even have a personal account.
Twitter is more of a broadcast medium than a social network anyway. Most of the most popular accounts are run by celebrities or "stars" in their fields. It seems likely that the number of active users will shrink while those that are active will become more relevant and drive more traffic to the inevitable ads that they will eventually have to add to the site once investors start to ask for profits.
Re:importance (Score:3, Insightful)
I imagine the SEC would care if they are falsifying data.
You have a remarkable imagination then. My imagination has a mathematician standing in a room in the SEC's Washington headquarters with an analysis that proves Twitters claims violate the very Laws of Thermodynamics, and nobody is interested. The meeting ends and they resume browsing porn [denverpost.com] back in their offices.
Of course, since my scenario is based on mere history, instead of your immense imaginative powers, I'll defer to you and take it as a given that the SEC has this well in hand.
Re:None of that matters (Score:2, Insightful)