Surging Twitter beats the forecasts

Twitter has beaten Wall Street forecasts after it posted a big jump in quarterly revenues.

The San Francisco-based social media company had 288 million monthly users at the end of the fourth quarter, a rise of 20 per cent on a year earlier.

However, the pace of growth slowed in the final three months of the year due to changes in the way third-party apps integrate Twitter.

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Revenues still leapt 97 per cent to $479m (£312.6m) in the October to December period, helping the site beat Wall Street expectations with net losses of $125m (£81.6m) for the quarter.

Shares surged 10 per cent in after-hours trading as the company said it expects to add a similar number of net users in the first quarter as it did in each of the first three quarters of 2014.

Advertising revenues per thousand timeline views reached $2.37 (£1.55) in the quarter, an increase of 60 per cent year on year.

Twitter shares have fallen by more than a third over the past year due to concerns about its ability to broaden its audience.

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They listed on Wall Street in November 2013 and more than doubled in value before falling back.

Meanwhile, it emerged on Thursday that Twitter’s chief executive, Dick Costolo, has taken personal responsibility for the social media website’s problems in dealing with abuse reported by users.

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