Twitter has 284 million active users

Twitter has seen its active users grow to 284 million. A large proportion of them visit the site via mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. The company made this known on Monday evening during the announcement of its quarterly figures.

Twitter announced that the number of users who log in at least once a month increased by 23 percent in the third quarter compared to a year earlier. A large part of them, about 80 percent, visited the site mainly with mobile devices.

The number of active users does not say anything about the number of people who are active on the service, because it can also be bots. That’s just hard to say; Experimental research has previously shown that it is difficult to discover so-called social bots – bots that can infiltrate a social network. Some of those bots even gained an influential position within the Twitter community.

Twitter continued to discuss the financial figures on Monday evening. In the third quarter of this year, the front page of the microblogging service was viewed 181 billion times. That is an increase of 14 percent. For every thousand views on the front page, Twitter received 1.77 dollars, converted about 1.39 euros. That is a significant increase from a year earlier. Then the company received 83 percent less per thousand views.

Turnover in the third quarter amounted to 361 million dollars, converted to 284 million euros. The vast majority, $320 million, came in through advertisements. That is an increase of 109 percent compared to a year earlier. Mobile users accounted for 85 percent of ad revenue.

The quarterly figures are not entirely rosy, however. Twitter suffered a loss of $175 million. The American company did not explain what caused the loss, but the acquisitions of three companies may have played a role. Thanks to one of those companies, Tap Commerce, Twitter is experimenting with posting tweets about products with a ‘buy now’ button.