The stock price of Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) declined more than 4% to as low as $38.80 per share on Monday as the company confronted fake accounts operated by a bot-master in Las Vegas.
The Wall Street Journal reported that a person named Jim Vidmar is managing 10,000 robots maintaining millions of fake accounts for approximately 50 clients. Vidmar uses the fake accounts to stimulate Twitter users to tweet, retweet, forward other tweets, send, and reply messages and many other actions on the platform of the micro-blogging company.
Twitter prohibits the creation of numerous accounts
Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) prohibits the creation of numerous accounts, buying, or selling account followers. Last spring, the company worked with a research team and blocked 95% new fake accounts. The spokesperson of the company said, “We have a variety of automated and manual controls in place to detect, flag, and suspend accounts created solely for spam purposes.” The company posted a job listing for an anti-spam product manager to help resolve the problem.
The micro blogging company indicated in its regulatory filing that fake accounts represents less than 5% of its 230 million active users. On the other hand, independent researchers believed that the percentage Twitter fake accounts are higher than 5%.
The shares of Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) were downgraded by some analysts particularly from Pivotal Research and Cantor Fitzegerald. They believed that the stock is “too expensive” and set a price target below the $30 level.
Based on the latest survey conducted by Bloomberg, 68% out of 750 investors who participated the poll projected that the stock price of the company will decline over the next six months. Ted Frost, one of the respondents and treasury administrator of Aurora, Colorado opined, “Since it’s not profitable, it’s too hyped up and subject to the volatile whims of young socialites’ fads. The run to almost $45 after being priced at $26 seemed like too much.”
Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) offered its stock at $26 per share during its initial public offering (IPO), and climbed by 73% to $44.90 a share. The current trading price of the micro blogging company is still significantly higher than its offering price.
Te stock value of other social media companies also declined today. Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) dropped more than 3% to $44.76 a share, LinkedIn Corp (NYSE:LNKD) fell 1.61% to $216.68 per share, and Yelp Inc (NYSE:YELP) sunk 6.72% to $58.20 per share.
