Twitter has 241 million active users

Twitter now has 241 million active users. This is evident from the first quarterly figures that Twitter has announced since its IPO. That is an increase of 30 percent compared to a year earlier, but the growth is leveling off.

Of the 241 million users who were active in December, three quarters – or 184 million – logged in via the mobile apps, according to Twitter’s quarterly figures. It is the first time that Twitter has published its quarterly figures; Twitter has recently been listed on the stock exchange, which means that certain figures about the business must be made public.

In the fourth quarter of 2013, the Twitter front page was viewed 184 billion times; an increase of 26 percent. For every thousand views on the front page, Twitter received $1.49, or $1.10. This brought turnover in the fourth quarter to 242.7 million dollars, or approximately 180 million euros. The company suffered a loss of more than $500 million, but that was largely due to the costs associated with the IPO. In all of 2013, Twitter made $664.9 million.

Although the user figures appear to be favourable, the growth in the number of new users is slowing and existing users are less likely to visit Twitter. The microblogging service promised in a conference call with analysts to make the service more user-friendly: many new users would now find the threshold to use the service too high, writes The New York Times. It also becomes easier to send private messages; Earlier it was rumored that Twitter would come with a chat app, similar to WhatsApp and Messenger from Facebook.