Unlike Facebook, which has been a strong direct-response performer for years, and Snap, which last year made a successful shift into direct response, Twitter hasn’t been able to figure it out.
New ad products teased on the earnings call may help; Segal said mobile app download ads are “a great business” for Twitter and hinted at more ad products to come for those advertisers.
3. mDAU growth is stronger internationally than it is in the US.
Twitter reported that the number of mDAUs in the US–its core market–grew by 5% year over year to an average of 27 million in Q4 2018. Growth in the rest of the world was stronger, at 11% from Q4 2017, going from 89 million to 99 million users.
The number of international and US MAUs fell at an equal rate, however. According to its Q4 earnings report, Twitter’s MAU count declined by 3% to 255 million internationally and to 66 million in the US.
It’s likely that much of Twitter’s mDAU growth is coming from Japan, the platform’s second largest market. In 2019, we expect 36.3 million people in the country to use Twitter at least once per month, behind only the US (55.7 million). Twitter also called out Japan as an important revenue contributor in Q4, accounting for 15% of the company’s total revenues that quarter.
4. To help boost engagement, Twitter might experiment with more chat features.
Twitter’s biggest challenge in boosting engagement is making the service easier to use. This isn’t a new challenge. As CEO Jack Dorsey stated on the earnings call, “having conversations on Twitter is pretty difficult," something he’s said repeatedly. He hinted at new features that would make conversations happen faster and put the ability to follow interests in the forefront of a user’s experience on Twitter. It remains to be seen whether the social platform can accomplish those goals.
In its letter to investors, Twitter also said it was experimenting with “changes that would make Twitter feel more like chat.” If that sounds familiar, it’s because Facebook has also said that it plans to focus more on the messaging aspects of its apps. Twitter has never been known as a messaging service, so this seems like a stretch for the company.