SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter changed its policy on Thursday to increase the service credibility that was costing its 100 most popular users about 2 percent of their followers on average. Data firm Keyhole revealed.
Chief Executive Jack Dorsey posted on Thursday that Twitter is no longer counting those accounts that have been locked because of fraud as followers. They have been kept out of Twitter’s daily and monthly active figure of users.
The accounts are locked per suspicion of an outburst of activity after being non-active for long.
This new policy could be profitable for some Twitter users because follower totals serve as a top selling point as celebrities and influencers negotiate deals with advertisers. For some followers, count denotes a point of self-achievement.
Due to this change in effect, Twitter’s “@Twitter” account lost 12.4 percent of its followers compared with Wednesday, the top 100 accounts by followers faced a huge drop. The median decline in the top 100 was about 734,000 followers, stated Keyhole data.
Elon Musk, the tech executive saw the smallest dip, that is, 0.3 percent, or about 71,000 followers. Twitter said its service-wide average drop was expected to be four followers. Katy Perry, the famous pop singer, whose is the most followed account, lost more than 2.8 million followers on Thursday, a 2.6 percent fall as compared to the previous day. Similarly, Pink, Mariah Carey, Britney Spears and Eminem, all faced a drop of more than 3 percent.
Keyhole specializes in data gathering from social media platforms like Twitter and Instagram and selling that to businesses.
Twitter efforts to limit misuse were applauded by the financial analysts.