SAN FRANCISCO: Twitter has posted $479 million revenue in the fourth quarter, up 97 percent from $242.6 million in the same period a year ago, reflecting shrinking of quarterly loss to $125 million, as compared with a $511 million loss last year.
Twitter shares rallied more than 10 percent in after-market trades, evidently powered by an optimistic outlook painted by executives who expected user growth to ramp and who confirmed an alliance with Internet search titan Google. “We closed out the year with our business advancing at a great pace,” said Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo.
The number of active monthly users of the San Francisco-based one-to-many messaging service monthly grew to 288 million – just four million more than in the previous quarter.
That figure fell short of expectations – analysts had predicted the figure would climb to 292 million. Twitter said that it lost four million monthly users due to a glitch in the new iOS 8 mobile operating system rolled out for iPhones, iPads and iPod touch devices.
“There was an unforeseen bug in iOS 8,” Costolo said. “Once we understood the issue we moved as fast as we could to minimize the impact.”
About 80 percent of the people using Twitter monthly connected with the service using mobile devices.
For the full year, Twitter reported a loss of $578 million, during which revenue more than doubled to $1.4 billion. Twitter shares were up more than 10 percent to $45.65 in after-market trades that followed the release of the earnings figures.
Twitter is stepping up efforts to boost its user base and monetization as the messaging platform faces pressure from lackluster growth since its stock market splash debut in late 2013.
This week, Twitter unveiled plans to sell ads that run outside its own platform in what could be the start of a broader advertising network.
The plan allows advertisers to place “promoted tweets” on third party sites, the first of which are Yahoo Japan and the news app Flipboard.
In January, Twitter began rolling out new group chat and video features. Costolo said that “a relationship” with Google has been rekindled, but he was coy on the details.
The deal will make Twitter messages more visible on the Internet, according to reports by Bloomberg News and The New York Times, with tweets showing up in Google searches as soon as they are posted.
