Reports of Twitter’s death last quarter—when a slow down in the monthly acquisition of new users slowed some, prompted many Twitter watchers to declare the beginning of the end—may have been somewhat exaggerated. This morning, Twitter is riding high with elevated stock prices after the company beat analyst expectations and revenue rose 124 percent, to $312 million with a slight uptick in stock price (as opposed to the penny loss being predicted).
“Our strong financial and operating results for the second quarter show the continued momentum of our business,” Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said in an earnings call. “We remain focused on driving increased user growth and engagement.”
As important as its revenue, so are the new users it attracted: Twitter added 16 million new monthly active users in Q2, who sent out half a billion tweets per day. Costello noted on the call that this metric, while important, simply does not capture Twitter’s full reach, which extends well beyond its MAU.
While Twitter plans to roll out updated metrics to more fully capture the breadth of its audience, analysts on the Q2 earnings call were interested in what Twitter’s plans for its MAUs is as of now, particularly as it’s making more eCommerce compatible moves, like its recent acquisition of payments company CardSpring.
Costolo was enthusiastic about what the CardSpring acquisition would bring to Twitter, but did not offer any concrete plans.
“…We’re excited about it, commerce has been occurring on Twitter for some time even before the initiatives that Nathan (Hubbard) is behind. We recently completed the acquisition of CardSpring which is an important proportional platform so it complements our commerce strategy and we’re very excited about the opportunities lies ahead of us and we’ll give you further updates as they occur.”
When pushed more directly about eCommerce ambitions, in light of the recent brief emergence of the “Buy” button on Twitter, Costolo remained steadfastly non-specific.
“…it’s really been the case that the World Cup experiences drove engagement, increased engagement from our existing users and it’s been the product changes that we’ve made over the course of the year that have driven new user growth. So that’s how I would categorize that, vis-à-vis the buy button specifically that’s another example of the kinds of explorations we’ve got Nathan and his team are focused on and you will continue to see explorations and other experiments like that. “
Twitter’s advertising revenue reached $277 million, up nearly 130 percent from the same time last year. Mobile made up 81 percent of Twitter’s ad revenue.
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