Twitter has impressed and surprised many with its latest quarterly financial results, with annual revenue growth reported at 97% causing share prices to soar. The social media giant beat Wall Street’s profits and revenues target, although user growth slowed down. Despite a few setbacks along the way, Twitter seems only to grow and conquer, with shares being boosted 11% as a result of the news. The site is predicted to reach a huge 300 million active users by March 2015, and has big plans for the rest of the year.

Good news

Investors were over the moon with Twitter’s revelation that its growth in revenues were up 97% to $479million (around £312million) at the end of 2014. But how does Twitter make its millions? One of the most important trends in the modern day social media and digital marketing world: mobile.

Twitter stated that 80% of its users used a mobile device to access the social media site at least some of the time in the last quarter. Twitter receives $2.37 (around £1.55) in ad revenues for every 1,000 timeline views, and a huge 88% of its advertising revenues come from those viewed on a mobile device.

Not so good news

Although Twitter reported an average of 288 million monthly active users at the end of the final quarter of 2014, this was only 4 million more than the third quarter – a surprisingly slow growth for the site. According to Twitter, the reason for this is that the social media giant lost 4 million users when it integrated with Apple’s new iOS 8 software. This is because there was an ‘unforeseen bug’ affecting the specific Twitter integration.

What’s next?

Deal with Google to show Tweets in real time

Twitter has made a deal with leading search engine Google which will allow its users’ Tweets to show up in search results in real time. This means that Tweets will be able to appear in search results as soon as they are posted, resulting in more traffic to the site. The deal will benefit Google in the way that it will be able to provide searchers with accurate information about what is being discussed on social media by celebrities, political figures, companies and other thought leaders, allowing Google to stay relevant.

Promoted Ads

Twitter will continue to grow its huge advert network over the coming months. As well as promoted Tweets from advertisers on the social media site, where companies pay Twitter to put one of their Tweets in other users’ timelines, Twitter has announced plans to let advertisers promote their Tweets on other sites. This will expand the already far reach of Twitter and its users Tweets, and continue to feed one of the site’s largest sources of revenue.

New features:

Instant Timeline

Twitter has started working on a new feature called Instant Timeline which is designed to give new users a relevant timeline based on their contacts and interests. This quote from the New York Times pretty much sums it up:

“Twitter analyzes your contacts and uses information like who they are and who they follow on Twitter to guess which accounts and topics might interest you. It then shows you those tweets in your feed.”

This feature could bring in millions of new users for the site, making the site more accessible and less effort for the less tech-friendly or those who don’t have the time to build up their own Timeline.

Video

Twitter has proven their ability to stay up-to-date with current marketing trends with their increased focus on video usage on the site. Added in January 2015, Twitter has enabled their users to shoot, edit and post 30 second videos to their Twitter account from mobile apps. They will also be able to upload videos from the camera roll within iOS. With more and more of us turning to video for entertainment and information, it’s more important than ever for Twitter to make the access to videos across all devices. With the rising use of video predicted for 2015, Twitter will be able to stay relevant as a social media source for information and entertainment in real time.

Group Direct Messaging

Twitter has improved its directing messaging feature, allowing users to send private messages to specific groups of users which follow them. This improved service could see Twitter pushing ahead in the social media game in 2015.

If you need any help keeping up-to-date with your company’s Twitter and other social media accounts, why not get in touch today?