Twitter Sheds Users Again in Fake-Account Purge

Twitter reported its first consecutive quarterly drop in users, losing more than it had expected and signaling further declines to come as it continues to purge fake accounts. Even so, Twitter said it boosted revenue and swung to a profit in the third quarter as it extracted more advertising revenue out of its existing users. Twitter’s monthly active users world-wide fell by nine million from the second quarter to 326 million—its steepest decline ever.  The results reflect the toll on Twitter’s user base as the company combats what it calls spammy and suspicious accounts, particularly in the months leading up to the US midterm elections. Twitter blamed the drop in monthly users in part on the same factors that plagued it last quarter—removing fake accounts and the impact of Europe’s new privacy law. A clampdown on automated usage such as bots, as well as a since-resolved bug in email notifications, also contributed to the decline, the company said.