Social media startup IRL is shutting down after an investigation by its board concluded that 95% of its claimed 20M MAUs were “automated or from bots”
Social media startup IRL is shutting down after an investigation by its board concluded that 95% of its claimed 20M MAUs were “automated or from bots”
Last year, the CEO of messaging app IRL repeatedly said it had 20 million monthly active users, who chatted about shared interests and planned real-world events together. Today, a spokesperson for the startup said an investigation by the board of directors concluded 95% of those users were “ ...
95% of 20 MILLION????
Soon to be reddit.
This is how reddit started.
If there are already articles proclaiming that user traffic is back to normal, I'd be surprised if this wasn't already the case at Reddit. Lots of subs I've been at have had wonky traffic and subscriptions behavior that looked like bots.
Reddit sells ads. They do this by convincing advertisers that access to their traffic is worth money. They'd be crazy not to cheat their metics, if it's possible to do so.
What are MAUs?
"Monthly Active Users" I think.
Saved me a google search
Made Up Users, apparently
Kinda unfair considering that's what reddit did.
@silverbax what are the odds on that being the same or similar for every other centralised social network? they only care about that magic MAU value and will tamper with it as much as possible to sell ads.
"ad fraud" is just something EVERYONE seems to be doing, and the big players just do it bigger.