Twitter has over 300 million users, but is still losing money

In the fast-moving world of social media, Twitter can be considered something of an old-timer; after all, it just turned nine years old this past March. Yet, in many ways, it's still struggling to find itself. Twitter has just reported its first quarter earnings report -- which was incidentally published early due to an unintentional leak -- and while it shows respectable user growth numbers, the company is still very much under water. The social media firm now boasts 302 million users, which is up 18 percent from this time last year and is a good 14 million increase from the previous quarter. Revenue for Q1 was $436 million, which is a decent 74% increase year-over-year, but is still below the $440 million forecast. And yes, the company is still not profitable, recording a net loss of $162 million for the first three months of 2015.

Twitter has been especially busy of late, as it constantly attempts to improve its core product with new features, trying out new avenues in video with products like Vine and Periscope, and is unfortunately still figuring out how to handle abusive users. But more than just making its users happy, it also now has shareholders to answer to, which means it needs to bring in more cash. That's why Twitter is doubling down on advertising with two key announcements: It purchased TellApart, a marketing tech company that previously worked with Facebook's ad department, and it now has a partnership with Google's DoubleClick platform that'll offer up more refined ad performance details to marketers.

Engadget