The business of Twitter Inc. continues to accelerate, but at the same time Twitter the social network is seeing its growth slow down, investors and media learned in Twitter’s Q4 earnings call yesterday.
If you didn’t have time to listen to Twitter’s call yesterday, the entire transcript is available on Seeking Alpha. If you don’t have time to read that (or a membership for that site) then here are the most important things to know:
- Twitter saw 97 per cent year-over-year growth on the quarter, raking in $479 million. That came thanks to a rise in ad value by 60 per cent to $2.37 per thousand views.
- But user growth was growing at a rate of just 1.4 per cent, compared to 4.8 per cent in the previous quarter. Twitter cited problems with third-party integration, especially around iOS 8, as a reason for the loss of some users.
- Twitter CEO Dick Costolo confirmed an agreement has been made with Google, but wouldn’t talk about any details beyond that. He did say that any launch related to the deal was months away. Speculation in the media is that Google will start displaying tweets in search results, as it did previously during a brief period.
Digesting the results
Twitter’s slow in user growth is worth some concern. While its advertising rates are going up, that can hardly be maintained if it doesn’t continue to show accelerated user growth each quarter. If the problem lies in a glitch related to iOS 8 as Twitter says, then its very possible we’ll see a turnaround by next quarter in this department. A deal with Google to see tweets in search results should only drive more eyeballs to the social network.
