How a small change by Apple cost Twitter millions of users – Quartz

How a small change by Apple cost Twitter millions of users – Quartz

Zachary M. Seward:

To make the feature speedy, Apple would periodically check Twitter for the latest links shared by people you follow. It didn’t matter if you were a Twitter addict or just signed up for an account one day, connected it to your iPhone, and promptly forgot about it. Because Apple kept checking your account for data, you would count as a monthly active user in Twitter’s statistics.

But when Apple released iOS 8 in September, it also changed how Safari’s shared links work. It no longer automatically asks Twitter for information, instead updating only when you actually open up the feature. Do it now, and if you are using iOS 8, you’ll see it takes a few seconds to load. (Oh, and if you do that, congratulations, you are now one of Twitter’s 288 million monthly active users, or MAUs.)