14 DAY TRIAL // Twitter’s numbers are out and it’s looking good for the company, but investors aren’t finding things all that impressive.
The social network now has passed 255 million monthly active users, out of which 198 million also visit the platform from a mobile device. The number of monthly actives has grown 25 percent from last year, but only managed to pick up 14 million users since the last trimester.
Year over year, the increase in mobile users is a bit more impressive, with 31 percent growth. Users spent a lot of time checking out timelines, which they did 157 billion times, 15 percent more than they did last year.
Twitter has also revealed that it has generated $250 million (€181 million) in revenues, out of which $226 million (€163 million) came from advertising. 80 percent of the $226 million came from mobile, making for a rather impressive growth.
“We had a very strong first quarter. Revenue growth accelerated on a year over year basis fueled by increased engagement and user growth. We also continue to rapidly increase our reach and scale. With the integration of MoPub, we now reach more than 1 billion iOS and Android users each month, making us one of the largest in-app mobile ad exchanges in the world and the only one at scale to offer native in-app advertising,” said Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter.
In the year’s first three months, Twitter has also continued to improve its experience for new and existing users by enhancing push notifications, reducing the number of steps in the sign-up process for Android users, while also allowing users to link their mobile address book with their Twitter accounts to find people they know on Twitter more quickly.
Improved tools for advertisers have been launched as well, which allow them to create tailored audiences from email lists and CRM databases, target TV conversations for Spanish language television, as well as to connect with users through Promoted Accounts in search.
As mentioned, investors haven’t responded too well to the company’s announcements. Twitter’s stock dropped ten percent afterhours to $38.05 (€27.55), a lot for a company that’s been doing relatively well on the stock market thus far.
However, investors seem to be concerned with what they believe to be a lackluster user and usage growth, which they’re afraid indicates struggles for the company. However, Twitter is not and will never be Facebook, and it won’t report tens of millions of new users from one trimester to the other.