The news of Elon Musk’s Twitter spread like wildfire not just on Twitter or other social media channels, but also on major publications of news channels. Everyone was talking about it and people were excited about it and wondering about what new direction will Twitter move towards.
But rather than the news of finalizing the deal, what people got to know what that the Twitter deal was put on hold. The announcement was made by Elon Musk himself through a tweet. The reason for the temporary hold of the deal was pending details regarding the spam and fake accounts that according to Twitter is less than 5%.
So, what’s going on? Will the Twitter deal go through? This article covers all you need to know about Elon Musk’s Twitter deal. Let’s dive in.
Is the Twitter Deal on Hold?
Still committed to acquisition
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 13, 2022
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
According to Twitter Inc Executives, the Twitter deal is going forward as initially announced. Also, the price per share is also what was originally agreed upon which is $54.20 per share.
Why has Elon Musk Put Twitter Deal on Hold?
One of the major reforms that Elon Musk has promised previously on numerous occasions is removing the spam accounts and Twitter bots. Accounts are specifically created to inflate the follower count of whoever is willing to pay to seem popular and influential.
Twitter claims that >95% of daily active users are real, unique humans. Does anyone have that experience?
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 17, 2022
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
While Twitter claims that the number of fake accounts on the platform is less than 5%, 95% are unique and real users. Although, Twitter has not yet provided any supporting evidence to such claims. Consequently, Elon Musk has put the Twitter deal on hold until he receives evidence for such claims.
What was the impact of Musk’s announcement?
Elon Musk’s announcement regarding the spam and Twitter bot accounts had a severe impact on the value of Twitter’s shares. The value dropped 20% after the announcement that the deal was being put on hold.
What are Twitter Bots?
A Twitter bot is a bot software solution that engages and interacts with Twitter users through the Twitter API. You can program a Twitter bot to perform specific tasks without the need for human intervention. For instance, it can like, retweet, follow, or even DM other accounts.
One of the best examples of Twitter bots in use would be the customer support chatbots. These chatbots assist in customer support services and quickly resolve complaints or queries of the customers. Also, these Twitter bots do not pretend to be unique users. They are programmed with unambiguous expectations in order to direct them to logical actions or prompts.
Although, whether the Twitter bots or effective or harmful can be determined based on how they are put to use. The customer support chatbot is obviously one of the practical uses of chatbots.
Here are some useful Twitter bots:
- @HundredZeros: Amazon has a large collection of eBooks and the @HundredZeros bot Twitter bot often suggest amazing eBooks that users can get for free.
- @Netfilx_bot: Netflix uses this bot to consistently tweet about the new content releases on the platforms and keep the users updated.
- @Earthquakebot: As the name suggests, this Twitter bot tweets about earthquakes that scale up to or above 0.5 on the Richter scale.
Although, if these Twitter bots are programmed to pretend like unique users and used to inflate the follower count of users, they are harmful. Not only is it unethical but also against the terms and conditions of the Twitter policy. It is also a major concern for Elon Musk.
Twitter Bot Scandals
Here are some of the most controversial Twitter bot scams.
Devumi Fake Follower Scam
The Federal Trade Commission in the United States had opened an inquiry against Devumi, a social media marketing firm, for allegedly selling Twitter bots as followers. The company had a supply of approximately 3.5 million Twitter bot accounts at the time of the investigation. The company sold customers over 200 million automated Twitter accounts to raise their follower count and thus their influence, according to company documents.
Athletes, actors, artists, authors, public speakers, attorneys, and more were among Devumi’s high-profile clients. This fraud has revealed several well-known Hollywood celebrities and actresses as well.
Crypto Scams
Several cryptocurrency scams were carried out with the assistance of Twitter bots. These Twitter bots, posing as well-known personalities, are soliciting small amounts of cryptocurrency from their followers. Accounts were impersonated using names including Warren Buffet, Elon Musk, and Vitalik Buterin.
The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has finally issued an alert about scammers who use fake endorsements to sell cryptocurrency scams.
2016 Presidential Election
Twitter bots had a significant role in Donald Trump’s surprising victory in the 2016 United States presidential election. After the third debate, pro-Trump automated bot accounts tweeted more than seven times as many messages as pro-Hillary ones.
How to Identify Twitter Bots?
If you are relatively new on the platforms you may have a couple hundred followers. At this scale, you can manually analyze your followers to identify Twitter bots. You can start by looking for uneven follower-following ratio, spammy usernames, generic tweets, and more to identify bot accounts.
But if you are a long-term user who has been actively tweeting and has hundreds of thousands of followers if not millions, manually analyzing each follower is not really an efficient way of doing it. It will be too time-consuming and tedious.
In such cases, it’s best to use a third-party Twitter followers tracker to identify Twitter bots, inactive followers, and spam accounts. One such amazing tool is FollowerAudit.
FollowerAudit
FollowerAudit is a premium Twitter follower tracker that can help you track, monitor, and analyze Twitter followers of any public Twitter account. It can also help you identify fake, inactive, spam, and Twitter bot accounts. You can also use it to monitor the Twitter follower growth of any user in real-time.
Key features of FollowerAudit
- Identify Twitter bots, fake followers, and spam accounts
- Track Twitter follower growth
- Analyze Twitter followers
- Track unfollowers
The basic premium plan starts at $29.99
Wrapping Up
Bots can be an excellent tool for providing relevant information, engaging with users on your behalf, or even providing customer service. But if used to inflate your follower count, you will witness a significant drop in engagement rate. Using FollowerAudit, you can purge your Twitter list of spam accounts and gain useful analytics for evaluating the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
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