After failing to add any new users in last year’s fourth quarter, Twitter Inc. added 6 million new users during the first quarter of 2018 while posting revenue growth of 21 per cent.
Twitter reported the news during a recent earnings call, with Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey labeling the quarter a “strong start.”
“We grew our audience and engagement, marking another quarter of double-digit year-over-year DAU [daily active user] growth, and continued our work to make it easier to follow topics, interests, and events on Twitter,” he said. “We also introduced a new framework to think more cohesively about the issues affecting our service, including information quality and safety. This holistic approach will help us more effectively address these challenges by viewing them through the broader lens of the health of the public conversation, and we’re encouraged by our initial progress in this area.”
While we still don’t know how many daily active users Twitter has – it’s a number Twitter hasn’t disclosed before – the company says it grew by 10 per cent in Q1, compared to 14 per cent in the Q1 2017.
Advertising revenue totaled $575 million (all figures USD), an increase of 21 per cent year-over-year, while total ad engagements increased 69 per cent year-over-year. Advertising revenue coming from the U.S. and the rest of the world is split right down the middle – Twitter makes $287 million from international advertising, while making $286 million in the U.S. Quarterly profits came to $62 million.
Until the fourth quarter of 2017, when Twitter earned $91 million USD in revenue, the company’s quarterly reports had primarily made the news for measuring its lack of income and new users. Twitter lost $108 million USD over the course of last year, and its user base hovered around 330 million throughout 2017.
Our thanks to investment research platform Seeking Alpha for the transcriptions from Twitter’s April 18 Q1 earnings call.