Twitter said Thursday that user growth rocketed in the last quarter, even as ad revenue was hurt amid civil unrest in the United States.
The short message service reported a net loss of $ 1.2 billion in the quarter, most of it from reserving funds for income taxes.
Revenue fell 19 percent from a year earlier to $ 683 million. Despite a slight rebound in the pandemic-induced economic crisis, Twitter said “many brands slowed down or paused spending in reaction to the United States civil unrest” in May and June.
Twitter said advertising revenue declined 15 percent in the last three weeks of June, but has apparently recovered since then.
A key metric for Twitter, the number of “monetizable” daily active users, reached 186 million, a 24 percent jump from last year.
This was “fueled by a global conversation about current events and continuous product improvements,” Twitter said in its second-quarter update.
Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said user earnings showed “the highest quarterly growth rate we have delivered” using this measure.
Twitter shares rose 6.5 percent in premarket trading after launch.
The earnings report comes a week after Twitter suffered an attack that affected high-profile accounts and raised fears about the security of the service, which has become a key element of the political conversation.
Dorsey said: “We moved quickly to address what happened, and we have taken additional steps to improve resilience against specific social engineering attempts, we have implemented numerous safeguards to improve the security of our internal systems, and we are working with the forces of the order”.
He added: “We understand our responsibilities and are committed to gaining the trust of all of our stakeholders with each of our actions, including how we address this security issue.”
[AFP]
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Nice update