{"id":399930,"date":"2018-02-09T08:03:16","date_gmt":"2018-02-09T08:03:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=399930"},"modified":"2018-02-09T08:03:16","modified_gmt":"2018-02-09T08:03:16","slug":"twitter-posts-first-quarterly-profit-ad-sales-rise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/?p=399930","title":{"rendered":"Twitter posts its first quarterly profit as ad sales rise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"story-body__introduction\">Twitter has reported its first quarterly net profit helped by a rise in video advertising sales.<\/p>\n<p>The news gave a massive boost to Twitter&#8217;s shares which closed 12% up on the day.<\/p>\n<p>That was despite the number of people using the social network coming in below expectations.<\/p>\n<p>Twitter&#8217;s previous failure to make a profit had confounded investors given its widespread use and popularity among celebrities and politicians.<\/p>\n<p>Net profit was $91.1m (\u00a365m) in the fourth quarter of 2017, compared with a loss of $167.1m for the same period a year ago.<\/p>\n<p>Twitter, which has posted consistent losses since it became a public company in 2013, said it expected to be profitable for the full year of 2018 as well.<\/p>\n<p>The company has found success with video and other changes, deepening the experiences on offer, James Erkine, director at marketing firm The Social Circle, told the BBC.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s now about taking that scalable model and using it to reach new user groups to increase their user base,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Hopefully now they&#8217;ve made a profit once, they should be able to do it next quarter and carry on doing it.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"story-body__crosshead\"><strong>User growth<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In October last year, Twitter had suggested a profit was likely as it sought to cut costs, including by slashing stock-based compensation.<\/p>\n<p>Revenue in the quarter rose 2% to $732m, as growth internationally offset a decline in the US.<\/p>\n<p>User growth, however, remained fairly flat.<\/p>\n<p>The firm reported 330 million active users a month, a rise of 4% on last year but no change on the previous quarter.<\/p>\n<p>Monthly active users in the US were down to 68 million from 69 million in the third quarter.<\/p>\n<p>Twitter said user numbers had been hurt by changes made by Apple to its Safari web browser.<\/p>\n<p>A crackdown on fake accounts also contributed to the lacklustre growth, it said.<\/p>\n<p>The firm has faced controversy over use of the platform during political events, including Brexit and the 2016 presidential election in America.<\/p>\n<p>The firm&#8217;s shares were trading around $32 per share in mid-morning trade.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211;<\/p>\n<p>Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Twitter has reported its first quarterly net profit helped by a rise in video advertising sales. The news gave a massive boost to Twitter&#8217;s shares which closed 12% up on the day. That was despite the number of people using the social network coming in below expectations. Twitter&#8217;s previous failure to make a profit had [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":399931,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[106],"tags":[1030],"class_list":["post-399930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=399930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/399930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/399931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=399930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=399930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=399930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}