INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
Twitter has no intention of easing up on its fight against spam users and other factors that jeopardize the &health& of its service,
despite the approach costing it three million in ‘lost& monthly active users.
Investor panic sent Twitter stock price down by nearly 20
percent in early trading today following its latest financial report
Twitter posted a record profit of $100 million for Q2, but its monthly user count dropped by one million, with its United States number in
particular down to68 million from 69 million in the previous quarter.
The company said on an earnings call that efforts aimed at
&prioritizingthe health of the platform& combined with other factors cost it three million monthly users — a number which could have
turned the user decline into a more favorable story of growth.
The company is anticipating another drop in the next quarter as it continues
to double down on fightingspam and bots on its service
That isn''t the only factor reducing numbers, however.A reassessment of its paid partnerships with carriers worldwide — which help bring
in and retain new users — in response tothe development of its Lite app is alsoforecast to reduce MAU.
Investors may be concerned, but
Twitter is bullish that an increase in thequality of users is ultimately better in the long run that the short-term gain of higher
numbers.
Answering questions on an earnings call, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said the clean-up strategy would be ongoing as Twitter intends to
&build [concerns for platform health] into our DNA.
When we do focus on removing some of the burden of people blocking/muting, we see
positive results in our numbers,& he added
&We believe this will encourage our growth story.
Yet the execs also played down the material impact by explaining that&many& of the ''tens
of millions& of removed accountswere already not counted within Twitter MAU metrics
Some, they added, had never been counted because they had been identified as questionable right from when they were registered.
Twitter
explained as much in its earnings release:
When we suspend accounts, many of the removed accounts have alreadybeen excluded from MAU or DAU,
either because the accounts werealready inactive for more than one month at the time of suspension, or because they were caught at signup
and were never included in MAU orDAU
We will continue to work hard to improve the health of the platform,providing updates on our progress at least quarterly, and prioritizing
healthefforts regardless of the near-term impact on metrics, as we believe thebest driver of long-term growth of Twitter as a daily utility
is a healthyconversation.
On the positive side, the executives played up the development of overseas revenue, which grew 44 percent
year-on-year and now accounts for 48 percent of Twitter total income.
Twitter posts record $100M profit but loses 1M users
