Technology

Posted on July 27, 2016 by staff

Twitter revenue down amid competition from SnapChat

Technology

Twitter experienced its slowest quarterly sales growth in three years but increased its monthly active users.

The social media site reported a 20 per cent increase in revenue, $602m, compared with a 61 per cent rise in Q2 last year.

However Twitter, which has never made a profit, reduced its quarterly loss to $107m(£84.7m) from $136m last year.

It also saw a three per cent increase in monthly active users, a value which is important in attracting advertisers.

It had 313m MAUs, compared with 310m in 2015.

“We continue to believe that, with disciplined execution against our priorities, we can drive sustained engagement and audience growth over time,” said Twitter chief financial officer Anthony Noto.

Shares in the company fell nine per cent following the announcement.

Twitter faces intense competition from Snapchat, favoured by younger people, and Instagram, which has a focus on images, in the blogging space.

Twitter chief executive Jack Dorsey said: “We are confident in our product roadmap, and we are seeing the direct benefit of our recent product changes in increased engagement and usage.”

It is ‘screening’ feeds of several NFL games this season while it has altered its feed to show users content its data believes they will find interesting – a la Facebook – in place of the old chronological system.

Meanwhile, Apple reported another fall in iPhone sales but growth in its services division.