Twitter’s troubles only get worse
Twitter reported quarterly revenue that fell short of estimates after the struggling social- media company restructured its advertising sales force and pared staff.
Fourth- quarter revenue was US$ 717 million ($ 997m), missing the US$ 740m average analyst estimate, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Sales growth of 1 per cent slowed dramatically in the period from the 48 per cent gain a year earlier.
Twitter’s share price on the New York Stock Exchange closed down 12.34 per cent at US$ 16.41 yesterday.
Twitter added 2m new users, bringing the total number of people who log in monthly to 319m, the San Francisco company said.
That was in line with analysts’ projections.
Twitter has had trouble persuading advertisers to spend more money on its social- media platform as fewer people join.
Pressure mounted in the fourth quarter when its search for a buyer failed, forcing chief executive Jack Dorsey to focus on reaching profitability as an independent business.
Twitter cut 9 per cent of its staff, sold its Fabric developer business to Google and shut down its Vine short- video app. It also lost both its chief operating officer and chief technology officer, increasing the load on Dorsey, whose time i s divided because of his other job as CEO of Square Inc.
“The fact that they’ve tolerated having a shared CEO is remarkable given the situation they’re in,” said Brian Wieser, an analyst at Pivotal Research Group.
“Unfortunately, it’s a situation of investor indifference — everyone is used to Twitter’s troubles by now.”
The company has been relying on live video partnerships, as well as video advertising, to jump- start user additions and revenue growth.
With video, Twitter aims to appeal to a wider audience, including people who may have decided its basic service — which lets anyone post 140- character updates to a feed that others can follow — wasn’t appealing.
Meanwhile, to retain the users it has, the company has made a push to address abuse and harassment.