I'd suspect a much larger proportion of Twitter users are things like RSS feed bots, though.

I would really love to see some numbers on that, but thanks to the IPO we will never have any insight into that. They have to make up numbers like that, or they lose money.

"It is an advertising-based business. Twitter also sells data. It will generate about $583 million this year. Twitter is expected to generate a little less than $1 billion in 2014, according to eMarketer.

Most of Twitter's revenue comes from three types of ads, although it plans to have a more robust advertising offering next year."

Aha!

>but thanks to the IPO we will never have any insight into that. They have to make up numbers like that, or they lose money.

Do you really believe that private companies are more forth-coming with information than public companies? Do you read 10-Qs?

Being public makes a company accountable to shareholders for just such information. Withholding it, or worse fabricating it, isn't the status quo with a public company. It results in shareholder lawsuits.

Fake Twitter Followers Become Multimillion-Dollar Business

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/fake-twitter-follow...

Over 27% of the Top 10 Twitter Accounts’ Followers Are Fake

http://www.webpronews.com/over-27-of-the-top-10-twitter-acco...

5% of Twitter Users Are Fake [reports Twitter in S-1]

http://investorplace.com/2013/10/5-of-twitter-users-are-fake...

edit: 1 in 10 Twitter accounts is fake, say researchers

http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/1-10-twitter-accounts-fake...

Even if 60% of Twitter's users were fake they would still have more active users than Pinterest so the title is still pretty misleading.

I'd bet Pinterest has more non-member users, though. Very few people read tweets who aren't members of Twitter. With no evidence, I'd bet that Pinterest has more people looking at galleries of pictures who don't feel a need to register.

Without direct access to their analytics and backends, educated guesses are the best thing available.

Thank you pessimizer. Interesting data.