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Should Twitter give Trump credit for record revenue?

Posted February. 10, 2018 07:36,   

Updated February. 10, 2018 07:36

한국어

U.S. President Donald Trump’s favorite social media platform Twitter has turned its first ever profit since it went public in 2013.

Twitter posted its first quarterly operating profit of 91.1 million dollars during the fourth quarter of last year, the company reported on Thursday. The company successfully turned into a net profit from a loss of 167.1 million dollars a year ago. Its revenue rose 2 percent year-on-year to 732 million dollars.

The social media giant reported 330 million monthly active users for the fourth quarter, a 4 percent increase from the previous year but not difference from the third quarter. Some analysts attribute Twitter’s impressive turnaround to the company’s decision to double the number of characters allowed in each tweet from 140 to 280 in November last year, thereby making consumers to use Twitter more and attracting more advertisers to be on the platform.

In 2016, Google and The Walt Disney expressed interest to buy the platform, which had suffered loss after loss, but the deal foundered. But this time around, the platform is showing signs of great rebound. As of January this year, its global market share stands at 5.51 percent, up 2 percentage points from a year ago.

Some point out Twitter’s surge was due in part to Trump, who practically delivers news agenda via the social media platform. “Twitter would lose 2 billion dollars if Trump stopped tweeting,” Bloomberg reported last year, quoting James Cakmak, an analyst at Monness, Crespi, Hardt & Co.


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