Twitter reports increase in number of users and falling revenue

Twitter released its figures for the first quarter of 2017 on Wednesday. In it, the service reports that the number of monthly active users has increased. Twitter’s revenue fell for the first time.

The service gained about nine million new monthly active users in the first quarter compared to the previous quarter. This brings the average monthly active users to 328 million. The company has not experienced that growth since the first quarter of 2015. Then 14 million users were added.

The number of users grew quarterly over the past three years, only declining in the last quarter of 2015, according to Recode. The number of daily active Twitter users increased by 14 percent from the previous year. Analysts had estimated the growth in user numbers lower, Reuters writes.

Twitter’s revenue fell 7.8 percent for the first time to $548 million. In addition, the company made a loss of $61.6 million; that is less than in previous quarters. In 2016, Twitter fired 9 percent of its employees, about 350 people, and said it wanted to turn a profit this year. So far this has not been successful.

Last year there were rumors that major companies were planning to bid for the service. In the end, no concrete offers were made after it emerged that the parties, which reportedly included Google, Salesforce and Walt Disney, had indicated that they were no longer interested in an acquisition.