After kicking former President Donald Trump off its platform a month ago, Twitter announced Tuesday it gained more daily users in January than the average number it has added in that month over the past four years.
While some critics were expecting a drop in users following the Trump ban, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told analysts Tuesday, “We’re a platform that is obviously much larger than anyone topic or anyone account.”
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While most of Twitter’s earnings release was devoted to the final quarter of the year where the company raked in more than $1 billion in revenue, Twitter did take the unusual step of offering user growth guidance for the current quarter. The company did so because of the circumstances involving the former president’s suspension from the platform following the January 6th attack on the U.S. Capitol by groups of his supporters and following two tweets he made which the company said were in violation of its glorification of violence policy.
Although not offering a figure for the new users added in January, the company did note daily users climbed to 192 million from 187 million in the third quarter, helped by one million new users in the U.S. The domestic market also accounted for the bulk of the fourth-quarter revenue of $1.29 billion. The U.S. was responsible for $733 million good for a year-over-year increase of 24%.
International revenue increased by 34% to $556 million, with revenue from Japan, the social media giant’s second-largest market, increasing 26% to $176 million, or 14% of total revenue.
As for advertising revenue, the company reported a 31% increase to $1.15 billion for the quarter, with total ad engagement growing 35% over the same period. Data licensing and other revenue increased 9% to a total of $134 million. Mobile application promotion (MAP) ads totaled more than $300 million in fiscal year 2020, roughly flat year-over-year. However, MAP revenue for the quarter increased 50% year-over-year. The company also announced the launch of its rebuilt MAP offering and website clicks objective, which the company says will “increase our addressable market and diversify our customer base.”
After-hours trading saw the stock up more than 2%.
Operating income totaled $252 million, or 20% of total revenue, compared to $153 million, or 15% for the same period in 2019.
Total costs and expenses for the quarter grew to $1.04 billion in the fourth quarter, with the cost of revenue, driven by traffic acquisition costs, revenue share from partnerships, and public cloud-related expenses, growing 38% to $433 million, research and development expenses growing 25% to $248 million due to higher personnel-related costs, sales and marketing…
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