Mixed results for Twitter in financial report

Twitter missed analyst expectations on revenue but exceeded growth on monthly users as the social media site reported mixed results in its latest financial report.

The micro-blogging site reported revenue of 595 million US dollars (£408 million) for the first three months of 2016, below the 607 million US dollars (£416 million) forecast by industry analysts.

However, the site added five million average monthly users, with that figure climbing to 310 million compared to the 305 million recorded in December.

The site remains some way behind rival social platforms however, with Facebook's active users currently at 1.6 billion, while messaging service WhatsApp has also passed the one billion mark.

Twitter has launched a handful of new features in recent months in an attempt to draw in new users, including re-designing the site's timeline so that tweets no longer appeared in order of the most recent. Instead, those posts Twitter believed were of interest to users based on their activity would be pushed to the top of the timeline.

The move was questioned at launch but in their financial results Twitter said only 2% of users had opted out of the change.

In a statement released alongside the earnings report, Twitter said: "As we outlined last quarter, we're focused on what Twitter does best: live.

"Twitter is live: live commentary, live connections, live conversations. Whether it's breaking news, entertainment, sports, or everyday topics, hearing about and watching a live event unfold is the fastest way to understand the power of Twitter.

"This is our first quarterly update after laying out our long-term strategy and priorities. As a reminder, we have five priorities for the year: refining our core service, live-streaming video, creators and influencers, safety, and developers.

"Each is critical to strengthening our platform and audience around live. We made meaningful progress across each in Q1."