Twitter Results Presentation Deck
A Note About Metrics (continued)
The numbers of active users presented in our earnings materials are based on internal company data. While these numbers are based
on what we believe to be reasonable estimates for the applicable period of measurement, there are inherent challenges in measuring
usage and user engagement across our large user base around the world. Furthermore, our metrics may be impacted by our
information quality efforts, which are our overall efforts to reduce malicious activity on the service, inclusive of spam, malicious
automation, and fake accounts. For example, there are a number of false or spam accounts in existence on our platform. We have
performed an internal review of a sample of accounts and estimate that the average of false or spam accounts during the first quarter
of 2019 represented fewer than 5% of our mDAU and MAU during the quarter. The false or spam accounts for a period represents the
average of false or spam accounts in the samples during each monthly analysis period during the quarter. In making this
determination, we applied significant judgment, so our estimation of false or spam accounts may not accurately represent the actual
number of such accounts, and the actual number of false or spam accounts could be higher than we have estimated. We are
continually seeking to improve our ability to estimate the total number of spam accounts and eliminate them from the calculation of
our active users, and have made improvements in our spam detection capabilities that have resulted in the suspension of a large
number of spam, malicious automation and fake accounts. We intend to continue to make such improvements. After we determine an
account is spam, malicious automation or fake, we stop counting it in our mDAU, MAU or related metrics. Additionally, we rely on
third-party SMS aggregators and mobile carriers to deliver SMS messages to certain of our users when we send our SMS messages
to such accounts. If, however, we are notified of material deliverability issues because of, for example, infrastructure issues at the
service-provider level or governmental restrictions based on content, we do not include the affected users in MAUS. We also treat
multiple accounts held by a single person or organization as multiple users for purposes of calculating our active users because we
permit people and organizations to have more than one account. Additionally, some accounts used by organizations are used by
many people within the organization. As such, the calculations of our active users may not accurately reflect the actual number of
people or organizations using our platform.
In addition, our data regarding user geographic location for purposes of reporting the geographic location of our MAU and mDAU is
based on the IP address or phone number associated with the account when a user initially registered the account on Twitter. The IP
address or phone number may not always accurately reflect a user's actual location at the time such user engaged with our platform.
For example, a mobile user may appear to be accessing Twitter from the location of the proxy server that the user connects to rather
than from a user's actual location.
We regularly review and may adjust our processes for calculating our internal metrics to improve their accuracy. Our measures of user
growth and user engagement may differ from estimates published by third parties or from similarly-titled metrics of our competitors
due to differences in methodology.
3View entire presentation