Twitter Inc estimated in a filing on Monday that false or spam accounts represented fewer than 5 percent of its monetizable daily active users during the first quarter. The social media company had 229 million users who were served advertising in the first quarter.
The disclosure came days after Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk, who has inked a deal to buy Twitter for $44 billion (roughly Rs. 3,37,000 crore), tweeted that one of his priorities would be to remove “spam bots” from the platform.
Twitter said in the filing it faced several risks until the deal with Musk is closed, such as whether advertisers would continue to spend on Twitter and “potential uncertainty regarding our future plans and strategy.”
Meanwhile, in his recent statement, Musk said he wants to expand the reach of Twitter beyond the current “niche” until most Americans use the social media platform. He told reporters gathered on the red carpet at the annual Met Gala in New York that an important measure of success would be whether Twitter could expand its audience significantly.
“Right now, it’s sort of niche. I want a much bigger percentage of the country to be on it, engaging in dialogue,” said Musk, who attended the celebrity-studded event with his mother Maye Musk, a model.
Twitter has about 40 million daily active users in the US, according to its most recent earnings report.
Musk said he wanted the platform to be “as broadly inclusive as possible, where ideally most of America is on it and talking,” and as trusted as possible.
The billionaire also said he would make Twitter transparent about how tweets are promoted or demoted and wanted its software to be publicly available for critique.
Asked about a potential exodus of employees, Musk said, “It’s a free country.”
“Certainly, if anyone doesn’t feel comfortable with that, they will on their own accord go somewhere else. That’s fine,” he said.
