Twitter made its first profit

Twitter reported a profit of $91 million in the last quarter of 2017. This was the first profitable quarter in the history of the company. For the last 12 years the social network has worked at a loss and has...

Twitter reported a profit of $91 million in the last quarter of 2017.

This was the first profitable quarter in the history of the company. For the last 12 years the social network has worked at a loss and has survived at the expense of investors and shareholders. For example, in 2016, the loss in the fourth quarter was $167 million.

In its letter to shareholders, the company said that total revenue grew by 2% to $732 million, although analysts predicted it would decline.

The number of active users reached 330 million and was below expectations. It seems that Twitter has already exhausted the growth opportunities of the American audience.

After the publication of data for the past year, Twitter (NYSE: TWTR) shares rose 30%. This was a record growth in the company's stock price since the IPO in 2013. At the same time, Twitter stock price rose by 47% for the year.

Analysts say that such a success was expected. Twitter is popular among celebrities, politicians, and other public figures. In addition, most companies conduct their own microblogs which report the most relevant and urgent news.

The company managed to significantly optimize costs and the service developers introduced a new algorithm that selects the most interesting tweets for each user's feed.

Twitter advertising services became more attractive for advertisers. In many ways, revenue for 2017 grew due to video advertising.

Other innovations, such as increasing the maximum length of tweets to 280 characters and new premium API's also proved successful and appealed to both users and investors.

In 2018, Twitter will continue to invest in technologies that will facilitate the involvement of users thanks to a more accurate selection of information.