Twitter clears up confusion on how iOS 8 made it lose users
It didn't make much sense. How would Safari cause Twitter's monthly active user count to drop so sharply (For comparison, Twitter also added 4 million users in the quarter.)
Twitter CEO Dick Costolo attempted to clarify Noto's comments, saying there "was an unforeseen bug in the release of iOS 8 as it relates to Twitter integration with iOS." Again...what
There were actually two separate iOS 8 issues, neither of them the fault of Apple. Twitter lost 3 million people it had previously categorized as monthly active users despite the fact that they weren't actually using Twitter--these users had connected their Twitter accounts to Safari and allowed the browser to automatically pull tweets into Shared Links. iOS 8 eliminated that auto-polling. An additional million users were unable to log back into their Twitter accounts after upgrading to iOS 8 due to an encryption issue on Twitter's end, Costolo told Business Insider. Noto said that number was higher than 1 million originally, but the network has been able to fix the encryption issues and win back many of those users. But the 3 million people counted as active users despite never really visiting Twitter Those are gone.
"We have a great relationship with Apple," Costolo was quick to add during the earnings call. But earlier today, Twitter's Investor Relations team reiterated:
That settles that.