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Twitter Added Zero New Users Last Quarter Despite Trump Tweets (nypost.com) 310

Twitter did not add any new users in Q2, a disappointing follow-up to what had been a promising start to 2017. Twitter reported earnings Thursday morning, claiming 328 million total users -- the same number it reported after Q1. Analysts had been hoping the company would add around four million new users last quarter. From a report: Despite its appeal among celebrities and public figures, Twitter has struggled to sustain its closely watched user growth even as it invests in features and live content to help draw viewers and boost user engagement. It is in stiff competition for advertising dollars with other platforms like larger rival Facebook and Snap's messaging app Snapchat. The company also reported a wider quarterly net loss and lower revenue, and said it did not expect its total revenue growth to pick up in the second half of the year. [...] President Donald Trump, one of the most active politicians on Twitter, has tweeted multiple times a day on average since his inauguration in January, according to social media analytics company Zoomph.
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Twitter Added Zero New Users Last Quarter Despite Trump Tweets

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  • Twitter is a perfect digital representation of what an empty head sounds like when it rattles.

    I'll take this opportunity to point out that this post would make a good tweet.

    • I disagree. Twitter was great for its time: Text out comments in 140 character or less from my candy bar phone. As times changed Twitter really didn't. Then instead of dealing with spammers and bullies they shut down their API's and made things harder for long time users.

      • by Hadlock ( 143607 )

        I might use Twitter if there was a client that was pleasant to use. I find it difficult to navigate using the stock app, and every time a good third party app comes out they seem to shut it down to avoid competition. If I want to read the president's tweets I just google "donald trump twitter" and most of the time someone has already summarized that day's outbursts along with relevant responses from the groups he had targeted that day -- no need to dig in and read the raw data.

        I have a twitter acco

  • I have five Twitter accounts. I post to one or another about once a week. I read Twitter...really only if I'm at a con and there's a bunch of feeds related to that (since that's the best way to find out where some action might be).
  • by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 27, 2017 @02:33PM (#54893737)

    Sounds like people don't want to be on a platform with that idiot taking center stage.

  • by cunina ( 986893 ) on Thursday July 27, 2017 @02:34PM (#54893757)
    Tainted by the awful people who most frequently and publicly post to it, e.g. Kanye, the Kardashians, Trump, and Wesley Crusher.
    • Trump has little to do with Twitter's growth or decline, or lack of either. Twitter as you state is tainted, but not just by celebrity types. Censorship has probably as much to do with the lack of growth, and the surge of competing products vowing not to censor.

      Twitter seems to be a big deal with media agencies who watch each others tweets, celebrities that follow each other, bots who don't care who they spam, and bot makers who think people are still actively joining in. Yeah yeah, some people follow th

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      Doesn't really make sense because you only see stuff from people you follow on your Twitter feed. Okay, they might re-tweet stuff from others, but presumably you follow them because they have similar taste or post interesting stuff.

      I find Twitter has a lot less random bullshit than Facebook, for example. And the people I follow post interesting stuff.

      • by cunina ( 986893 )
        Yes it does make sense, because the mainstream news media love to report on who tweeted what, and "who" is usually come celebrity cretin or venal politician. I don't have an account and yet I am sick of Twitter.
        • ... the mainstream news media love to report on who tweeted what, and "who" is usually come celebrity cretin or venal politician.

          I think it's a scream that they haven't YET caught on to one of the things Trump is doing with it.

          His tweets aren't JUST about getting to his supporters unfiltered by the lamestream media. (Most of his supporters don't follow them. There are other ways for him to get the word out that doesn't have the same set of gatekeepers.)

          Every time he wants to get something done without the

  • by Nutria ( 679911 ) on Thursday July 27, 2017 @02:39PM (#54893791)

    None of my family or friends tweet anything that I care about, and celebrities, "journalists" and partisan zealots hold no interest for me...

    • For 99.9% of it is just noise. However in an emergency situation it's an easy way to disperse information.

      • Indeed, in "happening right now" news, there is no better source. Anything else... meh.

        • There is something to be said about Twitter and news when old school news media run entire segments based on tweets. The more I think about it the more it sounds like the plot of a bad middle school dystopian story.

          • There is something to be said about Twitter and news when old school news media run entire segments based on tweets. The more I think about it the more it sounds like the plot of a bad middle school dystopian story.

            They do that because it's cheap. A lot cheaper to post items about tweets and youtube videos than to do some actual reporting.

      • by Nutria ( 679911 )

        SMS has 20 more characters, and works even on flip phones.

        • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

          Right but 20 chars were reserved for the user name so you could send tweets over SMS and know where they came from.

          • by Nutria ( 679911 )

            Why in the world do you want to repeal the 17th Amendment? (Unless you're a Poe, in which case: good job!!)

            • by DarkOx ( 621550 )

              Because the Senate should not be a damned popularity contest. We have the House for that. House elections are very local though. So constituents can easy get to the rep, and force them to answer real questions and maybe just maybe primary them when required. You might not like the makeup of the House or maybe you do but at least they can enact legislation, and function as a parliamentary body.

              The Senate by contrast is entirely disfunctional. Does not matter which party has the majority. Its been comp

            • Because the Senate represents the interests of the States not the people. They have longer terms and equal power regardless of the population they represent. When the constitution was drafted one of the concerns was "excessive democracy" as James Madison put it. The idea was that people were fickle and the Senate would be stable compared to the whims of popular passions dominating the House. Considering how people act today when they 'lose' it's easy to see that people let their passions get the better of t

      • So is a phone call or a text if it's to/from someone you know. And if it's about an emergency, there's always 911.
        • The problem with that is that it requires you to know the people you want to communicate with.

          Say I know a family member is at an event and I hear a tornado hits it, there's an earthquake, fire, terrorist attack or other massive event. I may not be able to get through to the people I do know there and I probably won't know the people that are trying to get information out.

          • I remember hearing some years back that tweet propagated faster than an earthquake. And some quick googling found a source. [washingtonpost.com]

        • by Nutria ( 679911 )

          The county where I live sends text messages as severe weather alerts.

    • by jetkust ( 596906 ) on Thursday July 27, 2017 @02:54PM (#54893933)
      Twitter isn't about tweets from family or friends. It's a news feed/live event forum.
    • by mea2214 ( 935585 )
      The only thing keeping me logged into Twitter is Trump. I'm not a supporter but was a big fan of "The Apprentice." I wonder if he has a staff composing these tweets. Is there a firewall in case he sends something against the law? I can't wait for the first books about all of this get published.
  • by __aaclcg7560 ( 824291 ) on Thursday July 27, 2017 @02:40PM (#54893795)
    If you ever read "Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal" [amzn.to] by Nick Bilton, you would know how appalling that the founding of Twitter was. Mark Zuckerburg has a great quote [thenextweb.com] in the book: "[Twitter founders] drove a clown car into a gold mine and fell in." It's not really surprising that Twitter had zero growth from riding Trump's pants legs.
  • twooter!
  • I didn't "get" it, but "everyone" said it was a big thing, so I signed up, found people, followed people relevant to my interests, tried to keep up. Gave it a month, checking in regularly on my account. At the end of the month I walked away, deleted the app and walked away, and never logged in again. At least I tried it but I honestly have no idea why it's so popular, what purpose it serves or how it can create a sustainable business. I can get how Facebook works, I can get how Google works, I can even unde
    • by jetkust ( 596906 )
      I'm shocked so many slashdotters don't understand twitter. It's not that complicated. You didn't like twitter because your feed sucks. For other people, it's the fastest source of news and current information. For anyone in the public eye, it's the fastest most efficient way to communicate a message. It's perceived and used differently than other social media networks which is why it still has 328 million subscribers.
      • by enjar ( 249223 )
        FWIW, I'm still a "subscriber" since I didn't delete the account. Why did my feed suck, though? I searched on my interests and found relevant people to follow -- I didn't subscribe to any celebrity feeds. I cut useless feeds when they proved useless or when the the tweets were too numerous (e.g. celebrities that are too self-absorbed). Like I said, I gave it a solid month to try and figure it out. As for "fastest source of news" ... I guess that's the case if you want news sources that just wildly agree wit
        • if you want news sources that just wildly agree with you and put together an echo chamber, news is one of the easiest things to get from many sources and methods, I don't need Twitter for that.
          Your parent is right.
          You don't grasp the difference between your way of 'reading news' and twitter.

    • I briefly contemplated signing up just so i could berate companies publicly for poor customer service. Companies REALLY respond to twitter complaints, often sending free stuff to make up for slights or percieved slights. I know my company does. Like people bending over backwards to make an issue go away. If its on social media, the marketing department is on everyones ass to fix the problem with a level of urgency that phone-in customer complaints never get.

      From that point, i'd say it does serve as a useful

    • I rarely use the app or web site, I get the tweets delivered to me by text message.

      Yes, it's "fluff", and the other subthread doesn't care about celebrities (which doesn't ONLY mean TV/movie people).. But I do think it's interesting to read bits of info (whether it's their opinion about something, factoids, or just links to other articles I may have missed) from people as varied as pro poker players to scientists (Neil Degrasse Tyson) to breaking news (CNN), etc..

      I have text message noises/notifications tu

  • Heard it was useful in making spring arrive early. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
  • by Okian Warrior ( 537106 ) on Thursday July 27, 2017 @02:51PM (#54893899) Homepage Journal

    There's also Gab.ai [slashdot.org], which has sprung up in response to complaints about one-sided censorship by the company.

    Gab has a much more elegant solution to censorship: if you don't like something, put it on your personal list of "things I don't want to see", and you'll never see those. You can specify users or specific words you don't like.

    Compare with Twitter, where you can complain about something being in violation of their rules of conduct for partisan reasons... and most likely it'll get banned.

    Lots and lots of people are moving over to gab once they've been banned at twitter.

    Usually with a screenshot of their *completely reasonable* post that got them banned.

    (Even Scott Adams gets banned and shadow-banned - for nothing more than questioning the science behind global warming. It's almost as if the science behind global warming can't stand up to scrutiny!)

    (Several of the recent bannings are for supporting the military trans' ban decision. Almost as if no one is allowed to debate that issue!)

    • Even Scott Adams gets banned and shadow-banned

      So he claimed, but it seems pretty doubtful. So some small, random selection of his posts didn't show up. It's not like Twitter is using ACID storage and he's a know nutbag.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      The problem with Gab is that it's filtering doesn't deal with most important use cases.

      You can block users and keywords. How does that help you when a mob is coming at you, or a troll keeps making new accounts? How does it help when someone doxxes you?

      Some people like 4chan, but at least on there most posts are anonymous. On Gab your account gives the trolls a target.

  • by 0100010001010011 ( 652467 ) on Thursday July 27, 2017 @02:52PM (#54893913)

    Election season is over. US, UK and France have all held their elections. Maybe there isn't anything for the bots to retweet and talk about any more.

  • Despite its appeal among celebrities and public figures,, Twitter has struggled to sustain its closely watched user growth

    So modify the product so it appeals to people other than celebrities and public figures. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Apple didn't become rich by tailoring their products to 1/10th of the 1%. The companies which make lots of money off tiny markets like celebrities and public figures sell very specialized and expensive products. e.g. Limousines. So Twitter needs to decide if they

  • by DarkOx ( 621550 ) on Thursday July 27, 2017 @03:00PM (#54894001) Journal

    Kinda want to see Twitter go down because as rule social media is kinda dumb. If Twitter falls it will shake investors faith in other platforms. Might be a nice domino effect. Really hopeful something like this could take the wind out of facebooks sails some before Mark succeeds in politically weaponizing. Which will be somewhat hard for him to do thanks to all the hard working cleaver trolls out there but its not impossible.

    If the investors could all get spooked and run off first, that would be great.

  • Attribution (Score:5, Interesting)

    by arth1 ( 260657 ) on Thursday July 27, 2017 @03:03PM (#54894017) Homepage Journal

    From a report:

    [...]

    "A report" is not a good enough source. The quote is not attributed. Where was it copied/pasted from? I'm not talking about the link inside the quote, but the quote itself. Who wrote it?

  • * The 140 character limit is just plain silly anymore
    * They don't have a solid version of more modern apps like SnapChat or WhatsApp.
    * Better flow control / Better lists - If you subscribe more then 3-4 big feeds forget seeing anything substantial. Some news site pride themselves on putting out a store or comment every minute. You can use lists but they've become so clunky. Give me something like Facebook that lets me switch between more viewed and the whole steam
    * Open the API up again - You killed off

  • I had a Twitter account and deleted it a month or so ago. Had nothing whatsoever to do with Trump: it's a stupid way to miscommunicate and I saw no reason to keep it. I would think more people are hanging on to their Twitter accounts to see what he is saying rather than leaving Twitter because of what he said. He may be slowing the landslide, not making it larger.
    • by nnet ( 20306 )
      no kidding, and they can catch his twoots on CNN.
    • I think a lot of people like the drama. Same reason why reality TV was so popular but instead of watching vicariously you can directly participate in all the glorious E-drama you can handle. It's the only thing that makes sense to me why someone would stay on Twitter.

      Well, maybe there are a few good handles to follow but those seem few and far between.

      • I don't think it's the drama, so much as it allows Trump's supporters to believe they're plugged into him. These tweets seem pretty mad to most people, but the impression I get is that the supporters look upon them almost as personal messages, propagating the illusion that somehow Trump is fighting for the little guy and cutting all them nasty elites out of the loop. There's a sort of crude brilliance to the Twitter strategy, at least so far as keeping the base onboard. Of course, the other sixty percent of

  • by Sumus Semper Una ( 4203225 ) on Thursday July 27, 2017 @03:23PM (#54894189)

    Assuming this data [statista.com] is accurate, Twitter's user base seems to have hit market saturation sometime around the start of 2015. The service has remained pretty much the same since they began it, so why would anyone expect that there are suddenly more people who aren't using Twitter that have decided that they want to use it? There was a significant uptick in the first quarter of this year (possibly attributable to Twitter being Trump's medium of choice), but anyone who thought that was sustainable growth was crazy.

  • I really doubt no one signed up for Twitter in the past three months. They just had as many users quit as joined.

  • No thanks. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by EnsilZah ( 575600 ) <EnsilZah@@@Gmail...com> on Thursday July 27, 2017 @04:34PM (#54894717)

    I wanted to open an account to follow some people whose work I'm interested in.
    An hour after creating the account, having done nothing with it, It's been locked and I've been told that it looks like I'm a bot registering multiple accounts and the only way to unlock it is to authenticate though my phone number.
    So I wrote to support that it seems like a pretty scammy way to get my phone number, and I'd be happy to talk to them, but I'm not interested in handing out that sort of information.
    Never heard back from them.

  • Twitter, huh, good god
    What is it good for
    Absolutely nothing, listen to me

    Oh, twitter, I despise
    'Cause it means destruction of innocent minds

    Twitter means tears to thousands of American eyes
    Where the president* goes and lies
    And despised, truth dies

    I said Twitter, huh good god, why'all
    What is it good for
    Absolutely nothing, say it again

    *president, so called
  • I asked my neighbor lady if she loaded up twitter to follow President Trump.
    Her answer: "If I wanted to listen to a fat, arrogant, crazy old man, I wouldn't have gotten a divorce."

  • Stopped using it due to these things. Reached a point where my opinion was likely going to cause people to start screeching if I was honest, so between Twitter censoring what I saw and self censoring myself to keep the peace, I'm very very glad I left.

    It's just a total political whine great now and a circle jerk off let's feel good for whatever reason today stuff.

    Shame, the breaking news was quite useful.

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