Twitter showing some signs of life
Company has renewed sales and user growth
Twitter beat sales estimates and added more monthly users, indicating signs of life at the social network that has struggled to attract new consumers and advertisers.
Twitter has been battling the perception that it’s a niche media platform, despite its emergence as U.S. President Donald Trump’s favourite communications tool. The company reported that monthly active users gained four per cent to 330 million in the third quarter, a positive sign for investors who view audience size as a measure of Twitter’s long-term health. Daily active users increased 14 per cent, the fourth consecutive quarter of double-digit growth, the company said Thursday in a statement.
Chief executive officer Jack Dorsey has shifted the company’s focus to videos and live events as a way to spur audience growth. Twitter attributed the user gains to changes making the platform easier to use, improved marketing and heightened awareness of Twitter from global events.
“This quarter we made progress in three key areas of our business: we grew our audience and engagement, made progress on a return to revenue growth, and achieved record profitability,” Dorsey said in the statement.
Twitter reported its net loss narrowed to $21.1 million, or three cents a share, in the quarter. Profit excluding certain costs was 10 cents a share, compared with analyst estimates of seven cents. Revenue declined 4.3 per cent to $589.6 million. Analysts projected $587.5 million, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Twitter says the better-than-expected sales were driven by its video advertising and data-licensing platforms.
Sales in the U.S., Twitter’s most important advertising market, fell 11 per cent from the same period a year earlier. The company has failed to capture more than a tiny fraction of the digital advertising market, which is dominated by Google and Facebook. Total revenue growth was driven by international sales, which grew six per cent from a year earlier.
Twitter said it had adjusted the number of monthly active users back to the fourth quarter of 2014 after determining it had incorrectly counted users of a service for third-party apps as active participants on the platform. After the change, the company said it had 326 million users in the second quarter, rather than 328 million.
In recent years, Twitter’s user growth has been crimped by its reputation for harassment and trolling, a view that was highlighted recently when it temporarily shut down the account of actress Rose McGowan after she spoke out on allegations of sexual harassment by Harvey Weinstein.
Twitter has been moving quickly to address the harassment and the foreign influence. The company said on Tuesday that it’s bringing greater transparency to advertisements on its site by exposing who paid for the ads, who they are targeted to and how long the campaign has been running.
Last week, Twitter said it will immediately and permanently suspend accounts that clearly harass or post nude images without consent. Dorsey conceded that Twitter has “to do a better job explaining our policies and setting expectations for acceptable behaviour on our service.”