BotAlert Throws Lifeline to Twitter Twitter’s search for a buyer in recent months has met with mixed reviews. Unfortunately Twitter has suffered from stagnant growth in its user base and loss of popularity over the last couple of years. Fewer users equate to less advertising revenue, so it’s hard to get a true value on Twitter’s intangible assets. One of the main reasons for the downturn is the sheer number of bots that are eating away at twitter’s user base and profits. “Everyone knows Twitter has a bot problem,” says Corey Park, strategic Advisor for BotAlert, Inc. “We believe our product can clean up the bots and recharge Twitter’s image. It can get users back, recreate trust and bring back the enjoyment that attracts users to Twitter.” It’s not that Twitter has been ignoring the bot problem. They’ve worked hard to reduce them and prevent the damage they do. But bots are insidious and exceptionally hard to eradicate. Kill off one and three more pop up. It’s an unstoppable plague. At this point, up to 23 million active users could actually be bots. When automated scripts (bots) generate 60% of the traffic on the web—you can see how they can manipulate, distort, and influence.
Our society values the thoughts and ideas of friends. But not when those Twitter “friends” are really bots created to sway their vote, influence their buying patterns, and spread false information on political and social matters.
Some leaders believe the Brexit surprise was because bots distorted the polls and exaggerated the popularity of the Stay group. Bots tried to influence and subvert the beliefs of real British people. Others believe the same thing may be happening with the current United States presidential election. Early this year Microsoft had a terrible experience as bots hijacked their tweets and turned them into racist hate messages. It was an embarrassment to Microsoft and a turn-off for users. And then we have the advertiser’s problems with Twitter. Bots cost advertisers about $8 billion per year in fraudulent online advertising. Marketers just aren’t willing to pay top price for bot-clicks. “It’s time for Twitter to do some spring cleaning,” says @glennkerridge “People don’t want to deal with this issue. It’s a big turn-off.” When you add the loss of advertiser revenue to the downturn in the user base you begin to realize Twitter has significant challenges ahead. Expanding the size of tweets, offering live feeds to sports events and allowing for images, are positive responses to the challenges. But if they can’t find a way to get rid of bots, Twitter may not be able to restore confidence and regain its followers. BotAlert to the Rescue
Twitter’s bot deletion triggers when someone… or something… sends out a large amount of tweets. Then their service reps check the account. But clever hackers create thousands of bots that send out smaller bursts of messages. And those bots are exceptionally good at appearing to be human. It has been incredibly time consuming to detect a real person from a bot… until now. BotAlert speeds the process by automating the detection. It uses sophisticated algorithms as it skims through selected bursts of tweets. It looks for correlated patterns of behavior — so it is effective regardless of the language used. Bots display behaviors that are unique. They are statistically impossible for humans to duplicate. But BotAlert excels at uncovering these difficult-to-detect patterns.
When BotAlert finds this correlated behavior, it pulls those tweets and then runs a three step process to confirm it’s a bot. BotAlert was invented by a major university in the United States. Experiments conducted by a noteworthy professor and his graduate students have uncovered over 700,000 bots and counting. The new technology finds and reports bots 100 times faster than any other current method. At last, it’s possible for Twitter to find bots faster than they can be created. It’s a chance for Twitter to re-create the fun experience it used to offer. “I don’t want to be harangued by bad tweets,” says @JasonPottinger. “I just want to connect with my circle of users.” With BotAlert, Twitter can take the opportunity to rebuild trust and market share. As BotAlert cleans out the bots, they can reassure advertisers and users the tweets they receive are from real people. Then more buyers may bid when Twitter next offers itself for sale. For more information on BotAlert go to www.botalerttech.com or email info@botalerttech.com Sandy Fox writes about Tech Start-up companies and novel technologies poised to improve our lives and the world. You can contact her at sandy@investmentcopy.com