Twitter loses 5 million monthly active users worldwide

The number of people worldwide who log into Twitter at least once every month has decreased by 5 million in the past quarter compared to the previous quarter. The social network now has 321 million monthly active users.

Compared to the same quarter in 2017, the number of users decreased by 9 million, the company reports in its quarterly figures. In the first quarter of 2018, the highest number was reached with 336 million monthly active users. Since then, a slight downward trend has been visible.

This decrease is mainly attributable to all non-US users: that number dropped from 259 million in the third quarter to 255 million in the past fourth quarter. But there is also a slightly downward trend in the United States: since the first quarter of 2018, Twitter has lost one million users there in each successive quarter.

As an explanation for the disappearing users, Twitter points to, among other things, adjustments that the company has made, such as reducing the number of email notifications. The company also points to the decision not to go into business with paid SMS services in certain markets. The company also points again to the General Data Protection Regulation. Twitter also pointed to the EU regulation as one of the reasons for a lower number of users when publishing previous quarters.

Financially things are much better. Revenue went from $732 million in the last quarter in 2017 to $909 million today. The annual turnover for the whole of 2018 amounted to more than 3 billion dollars, while in 2017 it remained at 2.4 billion dollars. The profit in the past quarter amounted to 255 million euros, compared to 91 million dollars in the last quarter of 2017. The profit for the whole of 2018 is 1.2 billion dollars, compared to a loss of 108 million dollars the year before.