Twitter bosses have admitted the service could be too difficult to use and have said they are considering radical changes to its fundamental workings, after revealing disappointing growth in new users that was branded "unacceptable".
In its quarterly earnings report published after markets closed on Tuesday, the company announced it had added just two million new monthly active users over the three months to June, its slowest ever rate of increase at just one per cent according to the Financial Times. It now has 304 million people who engage with the platform directly via a computer or mobile device each month, well below the 1.4 billion boasted by rival Facebook.
The news meant that although financial results beat analyst expectations, with revenue up 61 per cent to $502m (£321m) and losses down five per cent to $136.7m (£88m), shares in the company tumbled. The Independent notes they were at one point 11 per cent down in after-hours trading, wiping $2.75bn (£1.8bn) off its value.
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The trigger for the slide was an admission on an investor conference call by finance chief Antony Noto that Twitter's efforts to break into the "mass market" might take a "considerable period of time" and that advertising revenue could be squeezed. Co-founder and interim chief executive Jack Dorsey said the company needed to review its service to make it easier for users to grasp, which could even include moving away from the traditional reverse-chronological timeline of tweets.
Some were impressed by the candour on display from the man who would like to take on the chief executive role full time. CNN Money says the commitment to focus on "disciplined execution" to simplify the service and answer the question 'why Twitter?' was "better than previous refrains we've heard".
But Reuters Breakingviews columnist Robert Cyran disagrees, saying while Dorsey deserves credit for bluntly assessing Twitter's primary shortcoming - "getting more people to tweet" - how he says to do that "sounds like a bunch of consultancy gobbledygook" rather than a clear strategy and is "worthy of an unfollow".
