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While Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey doesn’t seem very excited about the platform at the moment, and is planning to execute “a huge fundamental shift” in how the social network works, external indicators appear to be quite favorable.
Last week, Twitter Inc. exceeded Wall Street estimates for profit and revenue, while also reporting user gains in the first quarter. The company grew quarterly revenues 18% year over year to $787 million. Twitter said its earnings grew on strong demand for ads and healthy growth in its daily users count.
Indicators show healthy growth
Shares in the social-networking company rose sharply after announcement of the earnings numbers, and Twitter’s stock price surged 16%. The stock went up about 40% since it started the year at nearly $29 a share.
The number of “monetizable” daily active users rose 11%, to 134 million, in the first quarter, buoyed by international usage leaping from 99 million in Q4 to 105 million now. Twitter’s monthly active user figures rebounded too, from 321 million last quarter to 330 million in this. The company also saw its operating income rise from $75 million in the same period last year to $94 million now.
Twitter users are younger, more educated and wealthy
Around the same time, Pew Research Center released a report on the San Francisco-based company, titled Sizing Up Twitter Users. According to the Pew survey of U.S. adult respondents, Twitter users are much younger than the average U.S adult and are also more likely than the general public to have a college degree. The median age of adult U.S. Twitter users is 40, while the median U.S. adult is 47 years old.
Based on the analysis of users on the platform, the report also says that Twitter users tend to have higher levels of household income and educational attainment relative to the general adult population.
Some 42% of adult Twitter users have at least a bachelor’s degree – 11 percentage points higher than the overall share of the public with this level of education (31%). Similarly, the number of adult Twitter users reporting a household income above $75,000 is 9 points greater than the same figure in the general population: 41% vs. 32%.
Pew Research Center
60% increase in ad payments to publishers
Twitter says it paid 60% more revenue back to publishers in 2018 than the year before, this being the second consecutive year of 60% growth in payouts.
Kay Madati, Twitter’s head of content partnerships, spoke with Digiday about revenue growth for media companies on the platform. Kay said that in the last couple of years, Twitter’s media partnerships have grown to more than 950 global content publishers.
We’re doing more content through more partnerships and deals than ever before. Even with the people we were already working with, we have gone back to the drawing board to make those relationships bigger.
Kay Madati, Twitter’s head of content partnerships
All in all, Twitter—the #1 platform of choice when it comes to news consumption on social media, according to the Trends Report from GlobalWebIndex—has soundly beaten bearish industry expectations and is showing consistent growth in user metrics, profits, media partnerships, and payouts to publishers.
