News Digest

Twitter shares soar as revenue almost doubles

Twitter’s share price rose almost 10% after the social network reported a near doubling in quarterly revenue, despite weaker than anticipated user growth. Its latest results showed Twitter raked in $479.1m during the final three months of 2014, with mobile advertising revenue amounting to 88% of the total. Its efforts to secure more cash from outside the US also appeared to be paying off, with international revenue more than doubling on the same period last year. However, Twitter remained loss-making at $125m during the quarter.

We have a number of projects under way to grow our user base and provide a compelling valuable experience to anyone in the world whether they have a Twitter account or not.

Dick Costolo

The number of new Twitter users was less than expected - at four million over the three months.  It had 288 million monthly users at the end of 2014 - a rise of 20% on a year earlier - and the company’s boss said the results showed that Twitter had demonstrated it was able to make money from the users it has. Dick Costolo, who had earlier promised a crackdown on so-called trolls using Twitter -  said: “We have a number of projects under way to grow our user base and provide a compelling valuable experience to anyone in the world whether they have a Twitter account or not.”