I haven't seen anyone ask the obvious question: just how many of Twitter's ~175 million accounts [1] are simply bots for this and other reasons? I haven't used

I haven't seen anyone ask the obvious question: just how many of Twitter's ~175 million accounts [1] are simply bots for this and other reasons? I haven't used my Twitter handle in the better part of a year (I tried it; sorry but for me it's just a glorified link aggregator and not a particularly interesting one at that) but somehow I still get people following me. Number of users for a site like Twitter is no doubt an important metric. It probably comes up in funding rounds. Those funding rounds will probably have goals/targets for Twitter to reach. Twitter has, to my knowledge, only ever stated the number of accounts, rather than the 7 or 30 day actives. This all begs the question: does Twitter have a vested interest in inflating their own numbers such that they like bot auto-registration and, well, anything that increases the account total? [1]: http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-how-many-users-does-twitter-really-have-2011-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-how-many-use...