Twitter’s growth remains flat as its profit continues to dip

Twitter’s Q2 2016 earnings report tells a story we’ve heard many times before: namely, flat growth and a net loss in terms of profit. For the quarter ending June 30th, Twitter saw revenue of $602 million but a net loss of $107 million. The service boasted 313 million monthly active users, up 3 percent over the previous year. Last quarter, Twitter reported 310 million monthly active users.

Twitter’s main source of revenue is advertisement. For the quarter, advertising revenue accounted for $535 million of the company’s $602 million total, with mobile bringing in 89 percent of all ad dollars. Ad revenue was up 18 percent year-over-year.

So far in 2016, Twitter has emphasized live video, particularly for sports and political events, and the company continues to update Periscope, its livestreaming service. Twitter also boosted its GIF size limit to 15MB, made it easier to quote your own tweets and rolled out a few changes aimed at making the site friendlier for casual users. Plus, Twitter is getting in on the augmented reality game with the addition of former Apple UI designer Alessandro Sabatelli.

“We are seeing the direct benefit of our recent product changes in increased engagement and usage,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said in today’s report. “We remain focused on improving our service to make it fast, simple and easy to use, like the ability to watch livestreaming video events unfold and the commentary around them.”

Today’s report marks Dorsey’s first full year as Twitter CEO since re-joining the company he founded. In July 2015, Dorsey took over as CEO from Dick Costolo after the company’s April earnings report showed slow user growth on top of net losses for the first quarter of the year. Twitter has historically struggled to attract users and generate profit on the same levels as platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Facebook Messenger, for example, recently topped 1 billion users.

Source: Twitter