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TECHNOLOGY A23
Monday 15 February 2016
Disappearing act: Twitter reports flatlining user growth
MICHAEL LIEDTKE 140-character limit on the In this Tuesday, Oct. 13, 2015, file photo, the Twitter logo appears on a phone post on the floor
AP Technology Writer length of each tweet. of the New York Stock Exchange. Twitter Inc. reports financial results Wednesday, Feb. 10, 2016.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — “We have some really
Twitter set out to build a weird rules ... that just no- Associated Press
virtual town square bustling body understands,” Dorsey
with billions of people. But told analysts on a confer- cial Officer Anthony Noto “Twitter is looking kind of meanwhile, added 28 mil-
it’s starting to look more ence call, mentioning Twit-
like a novelty stand as the ter’s arcane punctuation said the company is see- old now that there are lion users during all of 2015.
masses flock to other ser- requirements for replying to
vices that strike a more per- messages. “We need to fix ing more new users as well younger, sexier platforms Twitter’s biggest problem
sonal chord. things.”
The San Francisco compa- Dorsey added that he ex- as “resurrected” users who out there,” Messner said. stems from its inability to
ny showed no user growth pects the new timeline for-
at all in a fourth-quarter mula will attract more users. had previously enrolled “When you think of Twitter, make most of its users feel
report released Thursday, “It does improve the expe-
the clearest signal yet that rience fundamentally,” he and went inactive for a it is not where you want to personally connected to
the one-time trendsetter said.
is struggling to remain rel- Flatlining user growth also time. be if you want to be an in- what’s being shared on the
evant. That leaves it with suggests that Twitter’s pre-
320 million monthly users — vious effort to make the Twitter lost another $90 mil- novative user of social me- service, according to Gart-
roughly one-fifth the size of service more accessible —
Facebook. Moments, a tool that com- lion during the final three dia.” ner Inc. analyst Jennifer
CEO Jack Dorsey is work- piles tweets about major
ing hard to reconfigure the events in a graphic, online months of last year, preserv- Polk. “It’s really a very shal-
decade-old service. That’s magazine style — hasn’t
trickier than it sounds, since done much to get people ing its profitless history. Rev- Instead, people — espe- low, superficial interaction
he also needs to avoid excited since its October
alienating a core of devot- debut. enue rose 48 percent from cially teenagers — are on Twitter,” she says.
ed users who depend on it
to tweet their thoughts and By one measure, Twitter’s the previous year to $710 gravitating to Snapchat In contrast, users on Face-
track issues that matter to user numbers actually de-
them. clined in the fourth quarter. million, providing some and two other services book, Instagram and Snap-
Dorsey took a step in that Excluding people who only
direction Wednesday, an- receive Twitter alerts as text measure of hope that the owned by Facebook, Insta- chat are regularly interact-
nouncing plans to tweak messages, the company
Twitter’s timeline to high- said its monthly active users service can still be turned gram and WhatsApp. ing with people they care
light tweets that the ser- dropped from 307 million in
vice will appeal the most to the third quarter to 305 mil- into a viable of business. Even Facebook, two years about. That makes them
each user, instead of only lion in the fourth quarter.
presenting them in reverse Dorsey, however, said That lackluster perfor- older than Twitter and seen more likely to share infor-
chronological order. He those numbers “bounced
also has hinted that Twit- back” to third-quarter lev- mance has hammered as an old-fogey hang- mation about themselves,
ter may lift its long-standing els in January. Chief Finan-
Twitter’s stock, now down out by teens and young which in turn can help
more than 50 percent since adults, continues to attract those services sell targeted
Dorsey returned as CEO last far more new users — and ads designed to pique an
summer. The shares shed keeps people coming back individual’s interest.
another 52 cents, or 3.5 per- to find out what’s going on
cent, to $14.46 in extended with their friends and family. Polk thinks Twitter has to
trading after the fourth- WhatsApp now has more act fast to avoid a vicious
quarter numbers came out. than 1 billion monthly users downward spiral: “If Twitter
Perceptions of Twitter are while Instagram has more keeps falling further behind
souring on both Main Street than 400 million, including in this race, they are go-
and Wall Street, according 100 million added during ing to lose engagement
to Marcus Messner, an as- the first nine months of last with their existing users, and
sociate journalism professor year. Snapchat, another then they are going to lose
and social media specialist photo- and video-sharing insights into those people
at Virginia Commonwealth service, has about 100 mil- and they are going to lose
University. lion daily users. Twitter, advertisers, too.”q
