Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) has had a rough ride since going public in 2013, with its stock price shedding more than half of its value since then. However, year-to-date the share price has increased almost 7% and it could finally be finding its way back up.
The social media platform has seen its sales grow significantly over the years, with revenues of $664 million in 2013 almost quadrupling to over $2.5 billion in 2016. To put this into perspective, although Facebook Inc (NASDAQ:FB) has significantly more revenue than Twitter with $27 billion in its most recent fiscal year, its 250% sales growth over the past three years is second best among the two social media giants.
However, it hasn’t been growth that has been the problem; it has been the company’s lack of earnings. In the past four years the company has failed to record a profit and accumulated losses of over $2.2 billion during that time. Whether Twitter can find a way to finish in the black will be paramount to its overall success.
There is a lot of hype around Twitter, especially given how popular of a platform it is for the U.S. President. The problem is Twitter can often be seen as redundant since other social media platforms allow users to post messages as well, which undermines the usefulness of a platform that provides only messaging.
Now that the company is looking to double its message limit, it will only blur the lines more between itself and other social media sites, namely Facebook, where users already post long status updates in excess of 140 characters.
Tech Insider
