Elon Musk questions Twitter's 'monetisable' daily active users; calls it 'odd'

In the latest development in the months-old saga between Elon Musk and Twitter after he pulled out of $44 billion acquisition deal, the Tesla CEO on Sunday raised doubts over the company’s way of measuring its user base that the website terms “monetizable daily active users" (mDAUs). This monetizable DAU is a term for the users who log in on the website and access the platform any day through apps or on a browser. The term was used by Twitter for the first time in 2019 and said that it believes that monetisable DAU and its related growth “are the best ways to measure the success" of the website.

Taking to Twitter, a follower Alex, who is also a physics engineer and follows Musk, questioned the Tesla CEO, “$TWTR changed what it considers an active user and how it counts them about 3 years ago. @Twitter developed a proprietary method (mDAU) that's not based on any standardised industry methodology. Since then, the number of active users has been steadily increasing". 

To Alex’s question, Musk replied saying “Odd” and “Indeed”. 

In the follow-up to Musk’s response, Alex went on to state, “What I'm seeing is that after 3 consecutive quarters of negative growth, @Twitter decided to concoct a new way to count active users that fortuitously unearthed positive growth”. 

Twitter said it reached 237.8m users in April-June

It is pertinent to mention here that Twitter has said that its mDAUs are not comparable to current disclosures from other firms, including several others who share a more expansive metric including people who are not seeing advertisements on the platform. Earlier this year in April-June, Twitter said that it reached 237.8 million users, marking significant growth. The platform had stated that its goal was “not to disclose the largest daily active user number".

Twitter had said, “We want to align our external stakeholders around one metric that reflects our goal of delivering value to people on Twitter every day and monetizing that usage." Additionally, the company had said that it began disclosing the absolute number of average mDAU for both US and other markets in 2019. 

"Advertisers come to Twitter because we have one of the most valuable audiences when they are most receptive, and we generate a high return on investment against their campaign objectives whether they are launching a new product or connecting with what's happening on Twitter," according to the micro-blogging platform.

(Image: Unsplash/AP)