After round of savings: Twitter wants to be in the black for the first time
Twitter is forecasting a turnaround for the fourth quarter: The U.S. microblogging service announced on Thursday that it may post a profit (under GAAP) for the first time. Investors reacted enthusiastically: The stock jumped 8 percent in premarket trading.
For years, Twitter has been overshadowed by technology companies such as Google and Facebook, which clearly outshine the company in the battle for advertising customers. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey, who founded the company in 2006, has recently been making cuts almost everywhere and at the same time looking for new sources of revenue such as data licensing.
This seems to be slowly paying off. In the third quarter, the net loss decreased from 103 million dollars in the same period last year to 21 million dollars. Turnover, on the other hand, fell again by four percent to 590 million dollars.
Twitter explained the decline with the winding up of the TellApart platform, which had turned out to be a flop. The number of monthly active users, on the other hand, climbed by four million to 330 million compared to the previous quarter.
In particular, the increased use of emails and push notifications to alert members to interesting tweets has had a positive impact. "We're proud that the improvements we're making to the product are bringing people back to Twitter every day," said Dorsey, who also runs the mobile payment service Square.
Recently, the company has increasingly focused on the simultaneous transmission of concerts, sporting events and press conferences. It is also considering lifting the 140-character maximum for a tweet. Corresponding tests are underway. (SDA)
