Tech

Twitter Loses Users, But Stocks Soar As Fake Account Purges Continue

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Evie Fordham Politics and Health Care Reporter
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Twitter’s monthly active user numbers dropped for the second quarter straight, but the social media company’s stock soared more than 12 percent in premarket trading when it released its third quarter earnings Thursday morning.

Twitter stock shot up to $31 after the company announced its third-quarter revenue was $758 million, a 29 percent increase year-over-year, reported The Wall Street Journal.

Jack Dorsey attends WIRED25 Summit: WIRED Celebrates 25th Anniversary With Tech Icons Of The Past & Future on October 15, 2018 in San Francisco, California. Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for WIRED25

Jack Dorsey attends WIRED25 Summit: WIRED Celebrates 25th Anniversary With Tech Icons Of The Past & Future on October 15, 2018 in San Francisco, California. Phillip Faraone/Getty Images for WIRED25

Twitter blamed fake account purges and the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation that went into effect in May for the monthly active user drop.

“We’re doing a better job detecting and removing spammy and suspicious accounts at sign-up,” Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said in a statement according to the Thursday press release.

Twitter chief financial officer Ned Segal attributed the third-quarter results to advertisement revenue growth in the press release.

“Advertisers are choosing Twitter to reach the most valuable audience when they are most receptive,” Segal said in a statement.

The fall in average monthly active user numbers from 335 million to 326 million is Twitter’s “first consecutive quarterly drop in users,” reported WSJ.

The decrease was much bigger than Twitter expected. In the summer, the company predicted a drop more in line with its previous biggest monthly active user loss. That previous biggest loss was two million monthly active users in the fourth quarter of 2015, according to WSJ.

Twitter also highlighted that its daily active users increased 9 percent year-over-year, although that figure was at 14 percent in 2017. (RELATED: New York Times Publishes Trump Assassination Fantasy)

Twitter shares have risen approximately 60 percent over the last year compared to a four-percent rise for the S&P 500 in the same time period, according to MarketWatch.

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