Trump tweets don’t help Twitter revenue
For the first time since going public, social media site reports a decline in income
You’d think Twitter would be able to milk its status as President Donald Trump’s megaphone. But the company still faces stagnant user growth, has never made a profit and even reported a quarterly revenue decline yesterday, a first since going public.
Trump’s frequent tweets ricochet well beyond his 28 million Twitter followers. Anything he tweets can serve as fodder for social media, TV news shows and, often, late-night comedy. Analysts say Twitter’s user engagement — how often people respond, retweet or “like,” for instance — likely benefited from “political discourse” in the first quarter.
The problem: The people already on Twitter may well be using it more, but America’s first true “Twitter President” hasn’t inspired others to sign up for Twitter en masse.
Twitter said yesterday it had an average of 328 million monthly users during the first quarter, a 3 per cent increase from 319 million during the previous quarter. By contrast, Facebook has 1.89 billion and Facebook-owned Instagram has 600 million monthly users as of December, the latest available. More users, of course, mean more advertising revenue for the companies, since businesses try to reach as many eyeballs as possible.
Twitter has never turned a profit, and for the first time since going public in 2013, it reported a decline in revenue from the previous year. Its revenue was $548.3 million (Dh2.01 billion), down 8 per cent. This was still above Wall Street’s expectations of $517.3 million, according to a poll by FactSet.
Net loss was $61.6 million, or 9 cents per share, compared with a loss of $79.7 million, or 12 cents per share, a year earlier. Excluding stock compensation expenses and other one-time items, the company earned 11 cents per share in the latest quarter, down from 15 cents a year earlier. This was also above expectations” analysts surveyed by FactSet projected 2 cents.
With its slogan “it’s what’s happening,” Twitter has been trying to corner the market for real-time information, to be a place where people can go to find out what’s going on in the world and talk about it with friends and strangers.
And it’s not just politics, but also sports events like the March Madness college basketball tournament or World Cup soccer, not to mention the stuff seemingly made for Twitter, such as the outrage over the dragging of a paying United passenger off a full flight to make room for crew. Video was shared widely on Twitter, as were jokes and anger toward the airline.
As with Facebook, Twitter also has been pushing live video — whether on its main service or through its Periscope app — to keep users interested and engaged.