Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey - the company is under pressure to demonstrate user growth
Social media giant Twitter reported a flat Q4 in terms of user growth, with monthly active users static at 320m in Q3. The company reported revenues of $710m for the quarter, up 48pc on last year.
Total GAAP revenues for 2015 came in at $2.2bn, up 58pc year-on-year.
The company said it made significant progress in scaling the total number of advertisers to 130,000 in Q4, up 90pc on last year.
Advertising revenue for the fourth quarter was $641m, up 48pc on the previous year.
‘It’s remarkable we built this business in just five years from zero revenue’
International revenues – revenues from outside the US – came in at $247m, while data-licensing revenues totalled $70m.
Total average monthly active users were 320m for Q4, up 9pc on last year but flat on the previous quarter.
Mobile active users represented 80pc of monthly active users.
Twitter needs to hatch growth plans fast
“It’s remarkable we built this business in just five years from zero revenue,” the company said in its earnings statement.
“We saw a decline in monthly active usage in Q4, but we’ve already seen January monthly actives bounce back to Q3 levels. We’re confident that, with disciplined execution, this growth trend will continue over time.”
During the quarter, Twitter added native video capabilities, which led to a 220-times growth year-over-year.
Twitter also expanded direct messages (DMs) to allow for private conversations for up to 50 people and expanded the character limit for direct messages from 140 to 10,000 characters.
This led to a 61pc increase year-on-year in terms of the number of messages sent in Q4.
The company also introduced a new algorithm change today (10 February) that saw the company tweak the timeline to push the “best” tweets to the top of users’ timelines.
Twitter also this week unveiled a new ad format called First View that will give advertisers top billing in timelines for 24 hours.
Jack Dorsey image via JD Lasica on Flickr
