Twitter is still growing out their user-base, surpassing 300 million active users this year. Not all of these users are actually “human”, according to Twitter 8.5 percent of the total active users are bots.
This 8.5 percent leads to 23 million accounts not used by people, instead used to shovel out tweets, and automatically re-tweet and favorite certain items, depending on an algorithm the bot works on.
Bots on Twitter have different uses, most bots work on delivering spam, others offer sale news and some even offer natural disaster updates, like Earthquake and volcano eruptions, the type of information that might be useful.
Twitter does not seem to mind bots taking up space on the microblogging website, even if they are no use to Twitter when it comes to making revenue. Even the most humanised bots will not touch an advertisement, but neither will some people.
Bots have always been a problem on social services, but Facebook has worked hard to make sure fake accounts and bots do not reach any targeted audience on the social network, by making Facebook less anonymous.
Twitter still has this problem with anonymity, but this is also how Twitter works. The microblogging website does not need the account to have a first and second name, meaning companies, brands, charities and parody accounts can be made.
This will not bode too well for Twitter shareholders, who want every user to bring in some income. It reminds us of App.net, who wanted to make a social network where users paid to use the service, but this has failed to work in the early stages.
Offering the service for free with limited restrictions might be destructive to Twitter’s approximation on revenue, but it will bring more users to the platform, without fear that they need to give up all their personal information, like on Facebook.
