Twitter revenue jumps 18% to $787 mn, users down

Twitter on Tuesday said its revenue jumped 18 per cent to $787 million in the first quarter of this year compared to last year, while its monthly active users went down to 330 million, a year-on-year drop of six million.

"Q1 was a solid start to the year with revenue up 18% year-over-year, reflecting particular strength in the US. Revenue outperformance, in combination with lower expenses, resulted in better-than-expected profitability, with operating income of $94 million and operating margin of 12 per cent," Twitter said in the report.

Twitter also revealed that its monetisable daily active users - the new and preferred metric for user numbers that the microblogging site uses - were 134 million in the quarter, up 11 per cent year-over-year. 

Taking note of the spread of abuse on the platform, Twitter said it was taking a more proactive approach to reducing abuse on Twitter and its effects in 2019.

"Improvements in Q1 emphasised proactive detection of rule violations and physical, or off-platform, safety -- including making it easier to report Tweets that share personal information, helping us remove 2.5 times more of this content since launch," it added.

Twitter's total US revenue was $432 million, an increase of 25 per cent, while its total international revenue was $355 million, an increase of 11 per cent.

"We made a number of product improvements in the first quarter, including the launch of a public prototype app - with an initial focus on making Twitter more conversational, and a new Twitter camera to more easily capture and share what's happening," said the company.

For the second quarter of 2019, Twitter expect total revenue to be between $770 million and $830 million and operating income to be between $35 million and $70 million. IANS