Twitter follows Facebook in share price plunge

Despite some other positive indicators, Twitter's share price fell 14% as the platform revealed a dip in its monthly active users in its second quarter results, compared to the previous quarter.

Twitter had 335 million monthly active users between April and June, down from 336 million in the first quarter, though up from 326 million year-on-year. The decline was accounted for by the US user base, which decline from 69 million to 68 million monthly active users on the previous quarter.

Its number of daily active users increased 11% year-on-year, suggesting that Twitter is doing a better job of increasing engagement among existing users than attracting new ones – though it did not publish an absolute figure for daily active users.

Revenue, meanwhile, was up 24% year-on-year to $711 million. Advertising revenue grew 23% to $601 million, with total ad engagements up 81%, and cost-per-engagement falling 32%.

But one day after Facebook suffered the biggest loss of value in stock market history, investors appear to have paid more attention to the declining uder number. Facebook’s horror show came after its daily active users numbers came in below expectations.

Jack Dorsey, chief executive of Twitter, said the figures reflected efforts to "ensure more people get value" from Twitter.

"We want people to feel safe freely expressing themselves and have launched new tools to address problem behaviors that distort and distract from the public conversation," he said.

"We’re also continuing to make it easier for people to find and follow breaking news and events, and have introduced machine learning algorithms that organize the conversation around events, beginning with the World Cup. These efforts contributed to healthy year-over-year daily active usage growth of 11 percent and demonstrate why we’re investing in the long-term health of Twitter."