The Not-Curious-Case-of-The-Next-Web-Retweet-Curve

In response to this article on Forbes, I shall lean on the New York Times:

Zee Kane, the chief executive of The Next Web, said the company was aware of the accounts but had never paid for fake followers or retweets. He said a likely explanation was that the company had created a tool, called spread.us, that allows people to automatically tweet its content. He said the company stopped marketing that tool eight months ago because it did not add quality traffic to the site.