Here’s How Twitter’s Removal of 143000 Malicious Apps, After Deleting Several Million Fake Accounts, Will Affect Advertisers, Influencers and Content Marketers

Earlier this week, Twitter posted a blog announcing new requirements for developers who develop apps using Twitter’s API. The social media platform announced the new norms stating that they are “recognizing the challenges facing Twitter and the public — from spam and malicious automation to surveillance and invasions of privacy — we’re taking additional steps to ensure that our developer platform works in service of the overall health of conversation on Twitter.”

This meant killing off 143000 malicious apps, as a part of the ongoing purge of fake accounts, which resulted in popular users like Barack Obama losing as many as three percent of his total followers.

According to Twitter, in May 2018, its systems identified and challenged more than 9.9 million potentially spammy or automated accounts per week.

Also Read: How to Spot a Social Media Account That’s Impersonating Your Brand

We’ll let the experts and pundits haggle over the reasons behind Twitter’s latest move and its connection to Russian interference in US Presidential Elections. For lesser mortals like us, what matters is whether this Twitter Purge will affect us and how?

Three reasons why Twitter Purge will be beneficial to sales and marketing world

Genuine influencers will thrive

Influencer marketing has been on the receiving end of a lot of flak in the past few months. With Unilever and other well-known brands speaking up against fake flowers at the recently concluded Cannes Lions 2018.
In fact, The New York Times published an investigative report last year that found out explicit details about buying fake followers through a US-based company called Devumi, which boasted of well-known clientele. “While Twitter and other platforms prohibit buying followers, Devumi and dozens of other sites openly sell them. And social media companies, whose market value is closely tied to the number of people using their services, make their own rules about detecting and eliminating fake accounts,” wrote NYT.

The article went on to explain how NYT itself acquired 250000 followers for $250. “Unlike some social media companies, Twitter does not require accounts to be associated with a real person. It also permits more automated access to its platform than other companies, making it easier to set up and control large numbers of accounts,” added the article explaining how this falls under the legal gray zone.

If Twitter continues its purge on regular basis, it means that more and more influencers will be deterred from using fake followers, at least on Twitter.

Also Read: The Third-Party Data Crisis: How the Facebook Data Breach Affects the Ad Tech

Advertising campaigns will reach real consumers 

Imagine a major chunk of your advertising budget being wasted because it never reaches your buyers. With GDPR in place, Twitter has been locking out users that registered on the platform while underage. Twitter also mentioned that it will stop showing ads to accounts that are suspicious. This means that advertisers no longer need to worry about their ads being shown to suspicious accounts thereby losing out on genuine buyers.

The Motley Fool pointed out that although Twitter’s MAUs are far lesser than those of Facebook, the recently Cambridge Analytica scandal might dissuade advertisers from using Facebook’s advertising platform. “As investors focus more on Twitter’s ad revenues instead of its peaking MAU growth, it makes sense to finally clear out spam accounts and refine the company’s public image. The timing would also be ideal since Facebook has been in the penalty box ever since the Cambridge Analytica scandal compromised the personal data of up to 87 million users. Twitter reaches a much smaller audience than Facebook’s 2.2 billion MAUs, but it also requires much less personal data than the social media giant. Therefore advertisers looking for a viable alternative in social media could flock to Twitter and bolster its ad revenues.”

Also Read: 5 Pinterest Hacks That Can Be Used For B2B Marketing

Content Marketers can count on good SEO

As a content marketer, you can rejoice at the fact that both advertisers and influencers are being held accountable for their actions on Twitter. Because this means that your content will now reach your target audience, turning them into loyal consumers. It’s a long shot, but let’s take it. After all, if your social media campaigns on Twitter using real influencers turns out to be a hit, this will definitely improve your SEO as well as your brand’s image, and you’ll end up gaining more consumers.

Of course, we are yet to see a big impact of Twitter Purge. But if it turns out to be anything like the Instagram Purge of 2014, social media marketing is going to be the place to be in the upcoming months. We’ll keep you updated on that.

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