Dorsey said the company would focus on more disciplined product execution, simplify the website and better communicate Twitter‘s objective.
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It comes after Twitter interim chief executive Jack Dorsey slammed his company’s second quarter user growth, with the number of monthly active users only 2mln more than the previous quarter.
Revenue for the second quarter of its fiscal year was $502 million, compared with $312 million reported a year ago. That surpassed the $481.3 million in revenue analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected the company to report.
USA Today said that Twitter’s central challenge is the same one it has struggled with for years: It must overhaul the service that many find too complicated and clunky to make it far more appealing to the mainstream. Twitter is hard to use and has less than a quarter of that. And as a result non-users continue to ask, “Why should I use Twitter?”
After reporting quarterly sales that topped estimates, Mr Dorsey and Mr Noto struck a critical tone, saying user growth would not improve until Twitter reaches a mass market – something that would take a mixture of product improvements and marketing. The social media giant also reduced its net loss in the period to $136.7 million (21 cents per share) from $144.6 million (24 cents per share) in 2014.
Mr Dorsey is temporarily back in charge after the resignation of chief executive Dick Costolo last month.
“People all over the world know of the power of Twitter, but it’s not clear why they should harness it themselves”. Meanwhile, the company also launched a new autoplay feature that Twitter members can use on native videos, Vines, GIFs and Periscope.
For the full year, the company projected revenue of US$2.2 billion to US$2.27 billion and earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of between US$520 million and US$540 million. That is Twitter’s main beef with investors, the fact it has been two years on Wall Street and not shown any real profit or dividends to keep up with Facebook, Apple and other tech giants.
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For a short while, investors were happy, sending shares 12% higher in after-hours trading after the company’s release of its second quarter financial results Tuesday. Dorsey adds that its user growth numbers are not acceptable and Twitter is doing a not-so-impressive job of expanding accessibility.
