Twitter profits reveal that marketers like a less poisonous social media

Twitter can be filled with harassment, bullying, false information and hate speech– not precisely a warm and fuzzy location for individuals or business intending to spread their messages.

On Thursday, Twitter revealed it’s making strides versus poisonous users. The business reported that the variety of regular monthly active users fell a little to 321 million in the 4th quarter from 326 million in the 3rd quarter, associating the lower numbers to its effort to purge phony accounts, giants and bullies from its network.

“Our efforts to improve health have delivered important results,” Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO, stated in a declaration. “We enter this year confident that we will continue to deliver strong performance by focusing on making Twitter a healthier and more conversational service.”

The business cautioned financiers in October that it anticipated to see another dip in users in the 4th quarter, partially since of its crackdown on phony accounts. That effort is crucial to Twitter, which requires to reveal marketers it can draw in brand-new individuals to the platform while contending versus tech giants like Facebook and Google for advertisement dollars.

Twitter likewise supplied, for the very first time, the variety of day-to-day users of its service. That can be found in at 126 million for the 4th quarter, compared to 124 million for the 3rd and with 115 million for the very same duration a year previously.The business likewise warned that its day-to-day typical numbers aren’t straight similar to those from other business– Twitter’s are “monetizable,” significance advertisements get revealed, while other business’ numbers consist of individuals who do not see advertisements.

It’s the start of a significant modification in how to assess Twitter’s appeal. Daily users will be the business’s engagement metric moving forward, with the fact for regular monthly users being terminated after the existing quarter, Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal stated Thursday on a teleconference with experts.

Revenue grew 24 percent to $909 million in the 4th quarter from $731 million a year previously, driven in big part by marketing, which represents almost 90 percent of that cash. Analysts surveyed by Thomson Reuters had actually approximated $868 million in earnings. Excluding specific expenditures such as worker stock settlement, Twitter made 33 cents per share, above the typical quote of 25 cents per share.

“This was the best financial performance ever” for both the quarter and the year, Dorsey stated on the expert call.

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Over the past year, Dorsey has expanded the site’s rules for identifying fake accounts, looking for warning signs such as stock or stolen profile photos and misleading profile information. It’s been experimenting with ways to make it easier to start positive conversations such as tweets that prompt users to answer questions about themselves. And in November, Twitter suspended a fake account with more than a million followers for impersonating Russian President Vladimir Putin.  

But Twitter has also come under fire for not doing enough to curb on online abuse. It’s apologized for failing to respond to a threat a user received from Cesar Sayoc, the Florida man accused of sending pipe bombs in October to prominent Democrats and critics of President Donald Trump. A study released by Amnesty International and software maker Element AI in December showed that Twitter can be a toxic place for female journalists and politicians.

For the current quarter, which ends in March, Twitter said it expects total revenue of $715 million to $775 million. That apparently wasn’t to Wall Street’s liking — analysts’ estimates had been set at an average of $762 million.

In early trading Thursday morning, Twitter’s shares were down around 10 percent to about $30.75.

Cleanup efforts

When Dorsey testified before Congress in September, he pledged to improve the “health” of the platform. Like Facebook, Twitter found evidence that Russian trolls and other state actors use the platform to spread fake news and influence public opinions ahead of elections throughout the world.

Last week, Twitter said that since August it had suspended 2,617 malicious accounts tied to Iran. The social network pulled down accounts tied to Bangladesh, Russia and Venezuela as well.

The social network has been using its own Twitter account to showcase the “lighter, more conversational nature” of the platform, although not everyone is a fan.

Dorsey said Thursday that the company has four main areas of focus: encouraging healthy conversations; making the service more conversational; offering a clear, strong appeal to advertisers; and developing the platform’s technology, including an increased reliance on machine learning and deep learning.

“A big focus for us is to remove the burden from victims of harassment,” he said.

Meanwhile, the company has been testing new features meant to encourage more positive interactions. That’s included conversation starters that ask users to answer questions about the inspiring people in their life or about TV shows. Twitter has also been experimenting with more subtle changes, including status indicators so users can see if someone is active online.

On the conference call, Dorsey singled out the company’s addition, in December, of a timeline switch at the top of users’ feeds, which allows them to toggle between the most recent tweets and what Twitter presents as the most relevant.

“It was a huge and risky move for us,” he said, but “every metric we care about went up.”

First published at Feb. 7 at 4:14 a.m. PT.
Update at 5:56 a.m. PT: Adds information from Twitter’s conference call with analysts.
Update at 7:56 a.m. PT: Adds Twitter’s stock movement in early trading.

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