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back to article The DARK HEART of the Twitter IPO: FAKE USERS

There's something missing in Twitter's S1 IPO prospectus. There's only a fleeting reference to the midichlorians that power the dark side of the "Twitter economy" - that is, fake accounts. A company's S1 document is supposed to list "the factors which the Company considers to be the most substantial risks to an investor in …

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  1. James Boag

    You mean humans use twitter ?

    What about Machine account, I have never really seen the point of Human to Human Twitter communications,

    but as for machine to human, now that is useful, a couple of line of code and my door bell now tweets when it's rung, Once i add the camera to the pi, it will tweet an image of the button presser too.

    When i was running large batches of data processing, the machine tweeted, Feed me when it had reached the end of it data..

    very useful easy to implement and fits in your pocket !

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    1. solidsoup
      Reply Icon

      Re: You mean humans use twitter ?

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CK62I-4cuSY

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  2. John G Imrie
    Joke

    Total number of real accounts =

    Steven Fri + the 6 journalists who follow him.

    4 0
  3. Mike Flugennock
    Facepalm

    The silver lining in all of this

    "…if we discover material inaccuracies in our user metrics" - which is to say, the metrics used to guess how many Twitter accounts are fakes - "our reputation may be harmed and advertisers and platform partners may be less willing to allocate their budgets or resources to our products and services..."

    Meaning... fewer "sponsored tweets" polluting my feed? Just sayin'.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Given the rumoured size of the IPO and the number of users, it would seem that they will be obliged to aggressively monetize their users. Will the users all stick around for that?

    0 0
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      "they will be obliged to aggressively monetize their users. Will the users all stick around for that?"

      It works for Google. All depends on how agressively, and how much they want to make. Looking at reported numbers they need to quadruple revenues or more to support the valuation, so that's a whole lot more advertising on average.

      But one way of helping achieve that is simply to earn as much from non-US tw*tters as they earn from Yank tw*tters, as the limited data they have disclosed suggests US users generate six times the revenue. There's plenty of things they could expand - premium subscriptions, higher business charges, more advertising, more data sales, progressively reduced standard service, etc

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  5. Mtech25
    Unhappy

    I tried twitter once

    It recommended I follow Russell Brand.... after i had scrubbed myself clean i have not been near the damn thing since.

    3 0
    1. Solmyr ibn Wali Barad
      Reply Icon

      Re: I tried twitter once

      You have probably hit a bigger trend there.

      Those automated data munchers have become really good - at finding the most offensive and incompatible material for that particular user - and proudly presenting it as a 'recommended' choice.

      Sort of a reverse AI (isn't it what Intel's IA actually stands for?).

      Or a variant of Infinite Improbability Drive.

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  6. Mtech25
    Facepalm

    What i don't understand

    So Twitter a platform that is used so celbrtards can get into public fights with each other and makes a loss of 69m in the first 6 months of this year is valued at 10 beeelllion dollars. Gee I wonder why the banks collapsed.

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  7. John Smith 19 Gold badge
    Unhappy

    I can't get a twitter account.

    Because their BS system cannot (apparently) accept an email address that does not include my name.

    WTF would I leave my name (any name) on my email address?

    So will Twitter be like LinkedIn, or Facebook?

    F**k knows. I won't be buying any.

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    1. Graham Marsden
      Reply Icon
      Joke

      Re: I can't get a twitter account.

      "their BS system cannot (apparently) accept an email address that does not include my name."

      Says "John Smith 19"?!

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      1. John Smith 19 Gold badge
        Reply Icon
        Happy

        Re: I can't get a twitter account.

        ""their BS system cannot (apparently) accept an email address that does not include my name."

        Says "John Smith 19"?!"

        That's the one that actually has a name in.

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  8. frank ly

    "... we apply significant judgement ...."

    It would be better if they applied sensible and honest judgement.

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  9. skeptical i
    Facepalm

    Twaddle has any impact whatsoever on the economy?

    This is a bit scary, innit?

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  10. Sheep!

    Uh, what?

    " The financial institutions stopped caring whether the things it sold were real, or worthless.

    You can all recall what happened next."

    As I recall they all continued to rake shit loads of money while being bailed out by government with public money until the furore had died down enough for them to start slowly operating in the same way again. What's your point?

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