Does Twitter Have Half a Billion Users?
Has Twitter really hit 500 million users, as a new study claims — or is the company drowning in fake accounts?
Twitter tends to be very careful when it comes to announcing user numbers. Wary of its problem with bots and spam accounts — such as the thousands that have started following Mitt Romney in the past few weeks — the company appears to have a policy of only discussing the number of active users.
Back in September 2011, in a State of the Union-style talk at Twitter headquarters, CEO Dick Costolo said there were 100 million active users who log in at least once a month, while 50 million log in every day. On the company’s sixth birthday back in March, it announced the number of active users had reached 140 million — though it didn’t specify whether or not that was monthly logins…
