Twitter overstated user numbers in the past three years

Twitter has overstated its number of daily users between 2019 and 2021, the company says in its quarterly results. Due to an error, people with more than one account were counted as different active users.

According to Twitter Wrong user numbers were reported between the first quarter of 2019 and the last quarter of 2021. The company introduced a new feature in March 2019 that allowed users to link individual accounts together, making it easier for them to switch between accounts. “A mistake was made at the time, where actions on the primary account resulted in all associated accounts being counted as active users,” the company wrote.

As part of this, the platform has shared updated user numbers from Q4 2020 through Q4 2021. No data is available for previous quarters due to Twitter’s data retention policy. The user numbers were a maximum of 1.9 million too high due to the error, the platform claims.

In the first quarter of this year, ending March 31, Twitter said it had 229.0 million daily active users, 39.6 million of them in the US. That number is fifteen percent higher than in the first quarter of 2021. In terms of turnover, the company achieved approximately 1.142 billion euros. Most of it came from advertisements. Costs amounted to approximately EUR 1.265 billion in the first quarter of 2022. The company therefore recorded an operating loss of approximately 122 million euros last quarter.

Just after the last fiscal quarter ended, Elon Musk announced that he wants to acquire Twitter for $44 billion. Twitter has since agreed and the deal is expected to close later this year, subject to regulatory approval. Due to the impending acquisition, Twitter is no longer providing earnings and revenue forecasts for the coming quarters. Previous expectations are also withdrawn.