Analysts expected Twitter to report 325 million users, up 1.5% from the third quarter.
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The company letter states that Twitter has “spent the last six months structuring the organization and our leadership team to move with greater agility and focus, reviewing the state of our services and strategy, learning from what we’ve shipped, and developing a stronger point of view about what we are and what we want to be”. The company said it had 130,000 advertisers by the end of the fourth quarter, up 90% over the previous year.
A key metric used to analyze the growth of social media companies, total Monthly active users (MAU), was 305 million during the fourth quarter, down 2 million users from Q3. “We’re confident that, with disciplined execution, this growth trend will continue over time”, the company said.
The company reported earnings of 16 cents per share and revenue of $710 million. If the shares trade similarly in Thursday’s regular session, it will mark a new low.
The microblogging service 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.
In November, the company also replaced its longtime star-shaped icon (Twitter’s equivalent of Facebook’s thumbs-up) with a heart. His appointment lifted employee morale and investors appeared pleased with the choice to bring Twitter’s original product guru back to the fore.
During trading today, shares were up around 4%, to around $15 per share.
The stock has been pummelled, falling more than 70% from its 52-week high.
Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is making changes to meet those goals, and this is one of them.
But reports of the timeline shift have already prompted protests from some users who say it may lead to the death of the platform, tweeting with the hashtag #RIPTwitter. This is an issue that would somehow scare off some users from returning. But while visually stimulating, Moments hasn’t seemed to capture the adoration of the mainstream that Twitter is hoping to attract.
Despite the disappointing news for stockholders, Twitter did increase its ad business.
As a stock craters, so too does morale.
Dorsey took a step in that direction Wednesday, announcing plans to tweak Twitter’s timeline to highlight tweets that the service will appeal the most to each user, instead of only presenting them in reverse chronological order.
The feature is similar to Twitter’s existing “While you were away” option, which uses an algorithm to collect a handful of “the most interesting Tweets you received since your last visit”.
We’ll have to wait and see if this latest change ultimately gets people back onboard.
Luckily, it’s begun to spin up some changes that could help. And earlier on Wednesday, it started to add a selection of what it deems the best tweets to the top of a user’s timeline.
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Uhm, dude, this is “next week”, and the timeline changes just launched.
