Twitter now boasts 328m users, bests investor estimates

Although Twitter is an integral member of social media’s biggest hitters culturally, it’s lacking an impact financially.

Still, the company enjoyed a better than expected Q1 2017 according to its latest investor letter (pdf).

While the service continues to be a less than sound investment, there are positives that emerged from the latest results.

User growth is slow, but positive

For one, Twitter beat investor estimates, claiming an additional nine million new users worldwide. That takes it’s total monthly active user figure up to 328-million. That figure however still places it behind the likes of LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

As for daily active users, the company didn’t provide the world with an exact figure, but did tout an increase of 14% year-over-year for the fourth consecutive quarter.

Donald Trump, perhaps? Not entirely.

“We believe our audience growth has been driven by a combination of: organic growth (reflecting some seasonal strength), product improvements (including better relevance in the timeline and notifications), and marketing,” the company explains.

That wasn’t the only positive though.

Revenues were better than expected

Twitter also smashed its expected revenue figures by more than US$30-million, a massive win for the struggling company. It raked in around US$548-million in Q1 2017, with a 139% year-over-year increase in ad engagements also mooted.

Twitter gained around nine million new monthly users in Q1 2017, taking its total user base to just below 330-million worldwide

After investors gained word of these numbers, Twitter’s share price also spiked around 10% in early morning trading.

Twitter on the whole though remains an extremely slow burner.

Revenue is still sliding bit by bit quarterly, with the latest three months no exception.

The changing revenue model

As for 2018, the company’s looking at the potential positives.

Its touting its new focus on video ads and content deals as a possible boon for the company, while it continues to streamline its revenue model.

“We made meaningful progress in Q1, discontinuing investment in some products and features and reassigning engineers across new revenue product areas, our ads platform team, and a number of new strategic areas that we expect to open new avenues for growth in 2018 and beyond,” the company explains.

Feature image: Marisa Allegra Williams/Twitter via Flickr