Twitter hardly sees the number of active users growing

The number of active users on Twitter is barely growing, according to the quarterly figures. In three months, four million active users were added, the number of active members is 320 million. To stimulate growth, Twitter will broadcast advertising on TV.

Jack Dorsey, one of the founders of Twitter who has been CEO of Twitter since early October, announced during the presentation of the quarterly results that a TV advertising campaign will be launched to attract new users. Twitter also wants to persuade users who have left the service to return with the commercials. The commercials will be broadcast on prime time, during the World Series there will be a 30 second video aimed at sports fanatics. It is not the first time that Twitter has advertised on TV, it was already done in 2012.

The commercials are part of the measures to make Twitter profitable. Dorsey laid off 8 percent of its workforce earlier this month. In the third quarter of 2015, Twitter achieved a turnover of 569 million dollars, which is currently 515 million euros. That is 58 percent more than in the third quarter of 2014. Despite this, Twitter is in the red. The loss is $132 million. Twitter’s revenue comes largely from advertising, and 86 percent of this revenue comes from the service of showing ads on mobile devices.

Although the financial results were above expectations, the growth of users is disappointing. Twitter predicted to have 324 million active users after the third quarter, but that turned out to be 320 million. In addition, hardly any new members joined from the US, while Twitter owes its revenues almost exclusively to US users.