If an account is in lurk mode, then its not a spammer so I'm okay with it being left out of that equation.
Where I might agree with you is a lurk mode account could become collateral damage in being considered fake. Lurkers don't retweet though. An account with a million followers isn't seen by everyone. Having a portion of that million like/retweet amplifies even further with their network now possibly seeing something from someone they are not following directly.
I'd be willing to accept that the number of lurkers that get lumped in with fake accounts when deciding the percentage of actual eyeballs on posts is not harmful. Those numbers are made up stats anyways. Like the old days of TV/Radio stations that covered large cities with millions of citizens. They would claim they have an audience in the millions even though a small fraction were actually watching/listening.
Except the question isn't about the pure number of spam/bot accounts, it's about the ratio of spam/bots to "authentic" users. If you leave out the lurkers, that ratio gets skewed to mistakenly inflate the bot count.
First off, I don't give 2 shits about twitter, so I don't care if the numbers are skewd in either direction. This is more of an interest in seeing how SV stats/metrics are just a game. Just so that's out there.
A lurker isn't an active user in my opinion. Maybe that's not the same understanding as accepted definition. The lurkers might be absorbing some of the ad content, but they are not helping create new avenues for ads to be shared. Twitter's ad share surface area would increase tremendously if every user was actively producing tweets. That's the only metric that they are concerned. They don't care about how many people actually see the ads once they are there. They make their money on the potenial eyeballs alone. Lurkers are not helping increase those numbers.
> They make their money on the potenial eyeballs alone. Lurkers are not helping increase those numbers.
I don’t follow this.. Lurkers are they eyeballs presumably.
If everyone on twitter tweeted the same amount it would probably just drown out the popular accounts and create a more diffuse and less profitable ad space I think.
>> They make their money on the potenial eyeballs alone. Lurkers are not helping increase those numbers.
>I don’t follow this.. Lurkers are they eyeballs presumably.
The number of eyeballs allows for the price per ad to increase while the number of places ads can be placed increase the volume of ads. If lurkers are not helping to increase the volume, it doesn't make the platform as much money. Proving the lurkers are actually consuming the ads and making the ad buyer happy is non-trivial. Proving the lurkers are worth increasing the price per ad is also non-trivial. In the end, I personally feel like it is a wash by lurkers being overly represented in the fake account numbers.
Volume of ads is irrelevant. An additional tweet to attach an ad to does not generate revenue if there is nobody looking at it. On the other hand, though, an additional set of eyeballs on an existing monetized tweet does generate additional revenue.
As an extreme example, a single monetized tweet with a billion viewers generates money. A billion monetized tweet with one viewer obviously does not..
Why are lurkers not helping numbers? It's the exact same as Youtube, do you expect majority of lurkers on YouTube to not be counted because they didn't create a video? People follow what is already out there and ads target the people watching.
Where I might agree with you is a lurk mode account could become collateral damage in being considered fake. Lurkers don't retweet though. An account with a million followers isn't seen by everyone. Having a portion of that million like/retweet amplifies even further with their network now possibly seeing something from someone they are not following directly.
I'd be willing to accept that the number of lurkers that get lumped in with fake accounts when deciding the percentage of actual eyeballs on posts is not harmful. Those numbers are made up stats anyways. Like the old days of TV/Radio stations that covered large cities with millions of citizens. They would claim they have an audience in the millions even though a small fraction were actually watching/listening.