In any real world analysis, you are completely right. However in the tech hype center, it is a troublesome sign. Most people would be happy to even get a quar

In any real world analysis, you are completely right. However in the tech hype center, it is a troublesome sign. Most people would be happy to even get a quarter of that number. A significant portion of Silicon Valley has gone all in on the social web. With Facebook smarting from their IPO debacle, and Zynga slowly marching toward penny stock status, Twitter is their last great "social" hope. And this is not just VC's either, as the entire Valley has built a massive ecosystem about everything social web. Should Twitter falter, it will wash out a massive portion of capital on the scale not seen since the first dot com bust. In this context, 170MM active users is not so great. The bar has been set at 1 billion real, active users. This is especially when one looks at visits and engagement, where Facebook is still very much dominant. With Instagram out of the picture, Foursquare stalling, Path seen as small potatoes and Pinterest's potential questionable, Twitter is really the last massive, independent social tech play left.