Twitter Caught Overestimating User Count Over Three Years

Image Credit: Jeremy Bezanger / Unsplash

JAKARTA - It turns out that Twitter does not have as many users as it has been touting, the company admits that it has miscalculated the number of its users.

According to Twitter's Q1 (Q1) 2022 earnings report, the error stems from counting multiple active accounts when they are all tied to a single user. This happened for three consecutive years from Q1 2019 to Q4 2021.

Twitter explained that it launched an account linking feature in March 2019, which allows users with more than one Twitter account to link their accounts together in its user interface.

This makes it easier for users to switch between their different identities. Some of those accounts do belong to a single person, but continue to be counted as separate mDAUs or monetizable daily active users.

The mDAU metric has become a self-invented, non-standard way to measure users on the service. The idea came from Twitter after struggling to show growth through measuring monthly active users every three months.

It is known that the mDAU metric will represent users who are logged in and accessed Twitter on a given day through its website and apps and who are able to view its ads.

The metrics are meant to give advertisers a better idea of how many people on Twitter are eligible to target with their marketing messages in a given time period.

Finding errors in the user count, Twitter has rerun the figures in the mDAU metrics over the last quarter, and adjusted the totals. The adjustment results go from what should be 1.4 million users to 1.9 million users, depending on the quarter. As Twitter's overall user base slowly grew, as did the overcounting, the company earned nearly 2 million more mDAU than it actually owned.

Despite the errors, Twitter ended Q1 2022 with an accurate estimate of now 229 million users, up 15.9 percent from the same time last year, and topping analyst estimates of 226.9 million.

Furthermore, the social media with the blue bird logo has also set a high target to reach 315 million users by 2023 in addition to doubling revenue. The company believes they can get there through the development of its new product. Such as subscription to Super Follow, Twitter Spaces, and premium subscription service Twitter Blue.