Twitter’s poor run continues in Q4, meagre 0.6pc growth in MAUs

After looking at Twitter Inc.’s disappointing fourth-quarter earnings report, one might think there’s little hope left for Twitter, but the micro-blogging platform seems to believe otherwise.

"The whole world is watching Twitter. While we may not be currently meeting everyone’s growth expectations, there is one thing that continues to grow and outpace our peers: Twitter’s influence and impact," CEO Jack Dorsey said on a call with analysts after Twitter reported its fourth-quarter earnings report, its 10th consecutive quarter of lower revenue.

Twitter reported 319 million monthly active users, up 0.6 percent from the previous third quarter, and up 4 percent year-over-year.

Though the newly-elected US President Donald Trump was using the Twitter platform to post everything from political matters to his (sometimes unwanted) personal views, Twitter added just two million new monthly active users in Q4, and 14 million over the past year.

Despite the above-mentioned disappointing figures, Twitter's executives are just highlighting the 11 percent increase in its daily active users. In the third-quarter, the DAU growth was seven percent. According to Recode report, "Twitter is pitching investors on the idea that it may not be growing its overall user base, but those already using Twitter are engaging with the product more than they have in the past."

However, company is yet to disclose the exact number of daily users it actually has. The report also claims, that unlike Facebook or Instagram, Twitter was "not historically focused on daily active users."

Dorsey told analysts, “The president’s use of Twitter has broadened the awareness of how the platform can be used and it shows the power of Twitter. We can’t quantify any impact at this point in time, but we’ll continue to analyze it as we go through Q1 and talk to you at the end of the quarter.”

Twitter also said its live-streaming of the inauguration had the biggest election numbers for the platform, 8.6 million unique viewers. The election night and the final presidential debate also garnered 7.5 million and 4.2 million unique viewers respectively for the platform. Despite the growth in viewership, Twitter reported flat sequential growth in U.S. monthly active users, with 67 million for the third and fourth quarter.

Twitter witnessed a boost in international MAUs which were at 252 million for the quarter, up from 250 million in the previous quarter.

With the latest earnings report, Twitter is back into that difficult 'buyout' zone, at least according to analysts.