Twitter now has more than 500 million users, according to twopcharts.com, although only 100 million are active accounts.
Websense illustrates “some of the not-so-high Twitter highlights of the last 5 years”.
Started in 2006, Twitter had hit 300 million users back in May 2011.
Commenting on the situation, Mr. Carl Leonard, Senior Manager, Websense Security Labs said: “… what’s in a number? Twitter is free to use, easier to abuse and is constantly targeted by malware authors and spammers. It’s nothing new; not all Twitter users are who they claim to be. Let’s see this more than just a numbers game and focus on keeping users safe in real-time so they are not just another statistic.”Twitter estimated that only ten percent of its active users have sent more than 100 tweets, while only 20 percent of users have sent more than ten tweets.
Facebook hit 500 million ACTIVE users back in July last year.
Launched in 2004, Facebook now has more than 845 million monthly active users, according to its statistics.
The number of DAILY active Facebook users is roughly half that number, at 483 million.
The popularity of Twitter has made it a fertile hunting ground for abuse by spammers and bot networks.