Twitter heavily emphasised that the numbers were now on the rise; monthly visitors as of the end of January returned to the same levels as in late September.
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The future of the Twitter social networking service is being called into question after it reported a lack of user growth throughout the fourth quarter of 2015.
Reports that Twitter could be changing the timeline surfaced last week, prompting laments by users tweeting with the hashtag #RIPTwitter.
Overall, its monthly active users for the fourth-quarter were down by 2 million at 305 million signalling a continuing decline.
Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s chief executive and co-founder, tried to reassure users in a series of tweets last week that Twitter would remain the place for live news and commentary. The company said its base of advertisers has also ballooned to 130,000, up 90 percent from the year before.
Revenues for 2015 were up 58% to $2,2 billion and the company referred to this as another strong year, but investors were more interested in the number of active users then they were in the revenue increase.
The trouble at Twitter is taking a serious toll on the value of the company’s stock price, which hit an all-time low Thursday following Wednesday’s news that user growth had stalled. The company is often compared with Facebook Inc., which has roughly five times as many users and who it competes with for online advertising dollars.
However, there are some things about the new algorithm that users of the social media platform have to know. “We’re going to improve the timeline to make sure you see the best Tweets, while preserving the timeliness we are known for”. After the feature has been out long enough for users to get used to it, Twitter will switch it on for everyone.
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It forecast first-quarter revenue of between $595 million and $610 million, well below the average analyst estimate of $627.1 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S. While this was a 9% increase from the year-ago quarter, it was flat sequentially, marking Twitter’s worst sequential progress in users since it went public. Excluding items, it earned 16 cents per share. Basically, you’ll turn this feature on in settings (apparently it won’t be on by default) and the app will display the content you’re most likely to care about right at the top.
