Twitter struggles to take flight

Twitter came under fresh pressure on Thursday as the social network reported sluggish revenue and user growth and widening losses in the past quarter. Pre-market trades showed Twitter shares slumping 10.8% as hopes faded for a rekindling of growth at the messaging platform, which has lagged its rivals in the social media segment.

Twitter came under fresh pressure on Thursday as the social network reported sluggish revenue and user growth and widening losses in the past quarter.

Premarket trades showed Twitter shares slumping 10.8% as hopes faded for a rekindling of growth at the messaging platform, which has lagged its rivals in the social media segment.

Twitter reported a net loss in the fourth quarter of $167m, after a $90m deficit in the same period a year ago.

Revenue in the quarter rose a modest 1% to $717m.

In the critical area of user growth, Twitter said it had ended 2016 with 319-million monthly active users, a gain of 4% from a year ago in the closely watched metric and only 2-million more than in the prior quarter.

Twitter, which has never reported a profit, has been revamping its offerings as it seeks to expand beyond its core base of politicians, celebrities and journalists. Some analysts had expected a bump in Twitter use following the election of US President Donald Trump, who is an avid user of the platform and frequently offers his views on policy.

Twitter CE Jack Dorsey said, however, that “2016 was a transformative year as we reset and focused on why people use Twitter: it’s the fastest way to see what’s happening and what everyone’s talking about”. Dorsey said that Twitter “overcame the toughest challenge for any consumer service at scale by reversing declining audience trends and re-accelerating usage.”

Twitter said it continued to work toward achieving profitability in 2017.

Chief operating officer Anthony Noto said: “We’re hearing positive feedback from our ad partners about our continued acceleration in audience growth and engagement.” But he noted that “revenue growth will continue to lag audience growth due to the sales cycle and could be further impacted by the escalating competition for digital advertising spending and our efforts to re-evaluate our revenue product feature portfolio”.

Earlier this week, analyst Richard Greenfield of research firm BTIG said he saw positive signs of growing user engagement on Twitter.