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For the first time in over a year, Twitter’s monthly active users haven’t increased

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After adding 9 million users in the first three months of the year, Twitter’s total active monthly user count shows that no one is signing up for new accounts — or at least not at a rate higher than users leaving the social media platform. While user numbers were not what the platform was hoping for, revenue was higher than expected, with news of another advertising option in beta for automatic boosted posts through a monthly subscription. Twitter shared the growth data as part of its second quarter earnings for 2017.

The report shows that, in those three months, around 2 million users in the U.S. left the platform, while Twitter gained around a million international users. Considering active monthly users, the platform stayed stagnant at 328 million users.

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While monthly numbers didn’t change from the first part of the year, compared to last year, Twitter has more people using the platform every day, with around a 12 percent growth over the same time in 2016.

Twitter fans shouldn’t worry too much about the lack of growth, however — while the total users stayed the same, financially, the company reported growth compared to the first part of the year. The platform went above and beyond Wall Street’s predictions with a revenue totaling $574 million.

Vine’s shutdown has many investors concerned with the financial future of the company, but the latest reports suggest Twitter is not staying stagnant on income. To add another potential revenue option, the platform is now testing an option to automatically boost Tweets for $99 a month. The idea is to take the time out of promoting individual tweets, since individual tweets are automatically boosted, and participants will see the results in a bi-weekly analytical report.

Twitter is only testing the feature for now, however, so it is unclear if the automatic ad subscription will roll out to all users or not. The beta test of the feature is only available to users by invitation, according to a tweet by one user.

Hillary K. Grigonis
Hillary K. Grigonis
Former Contributor
Hillary never planned on becoming a photographer—and then she was handed a camera at her first writing job and she's been…
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