Twitter Flips Reporting, Claims 3% More Users Saw Ads In Q2 Than Initially Reported

During the Q2 Earnings call last month, Twitter reported that 14% of users accessed the service via third party apps during the quarter. However, in a new SEC filling released yesterday, the company changed that number to 11% of users.

This is an important metric as users that don’t use the official Twitter app, mobile web or desktop iterations don’t see ads.  In the official earnings report slides, that metric was changed yesterday to state:

[blockquote]Updated as of August 11, 2014. Twitter previously indicated that for this period approximately 14% of all active users used applications that have the capability to
automatically contact our servers for regular updates, but later discovered that this number included certain users who accessed Twitter through owned and operated
applications.[/blockquote]

This means there was a 3% of users that were, in fact, subjected to advertising (compared to the initial Q2 numbers). This difference is an additional 8.9 million users would have been viewing ads during this timeframe.

A Twitter spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that there was no material change to historical figures. When these users are removed from the overall numbers, the WSJ accurately points out that the overall user growth actually accelerated, up 7.5% from Q1’s 4.4% growth.

For more information see the specific findings from Wall Street Journal, the earnings slides or the official fillings.