Twitter kills Vine but quarterly earnings look promising

Twitter's long and lone battle to find a stronghold in the market, has left many with very little hope from the company. Google, Disney, Salesforce etc, who were once keen for an acquisition deal, have also lost interest now. Then, recently, the micro-blogging site also announced to cut off 300 employees, 8 percent of workforce citing ‘restructuring’ processes for next year.

However, in the midst of all this, Twitter finally sees a ray of hope. At the unusual hour - 4 a.m. pacific time, the company announced its earnings beating analysts' expectations on revenue.

Twitter posted adjusted earnings of 13 cents per share on revenue of $616 million, whereas analysts were expecting 9 cents per share on $606 million. With monthly active users of 317 million (up 4 million from its second quarter), Twitter saw a 7 percent increase in its number of daily active users (DAU). Dorsey, we still believe in you!

The company reported $545 million in total advertising revenue, up $10 million from its second quarter and up 6 percent year over year. Mobile advertising was responsible for 90 percent of that figure, up 1 percent from last quarter. According to the WSJ report, the company is targeting 'driving toward' profitability in 2017.

Meanwhile, Twitter has also announced that it is shutting down its short video services, Vine. The mobile app will be discontinued “in coming months,” the company said.

The company said it would not delete any Vines that have been posted — for now, anyway. “We value you, your Vines, and are going to do this the right way,” the company said in a Medium post. “You’ll be able to access and download your Vines. We’ll be keeping the website online because we think it’s important to still be able to watch all the incredible Vines that have been made.”

According to company's perspective, it is the right decision as it's not leading to Twitter's current goal of 'live news'. In the recent U.S presidential debate, Twitter received the highest DAU levels, courtesy the lives news. However, in the case of Vine, where users can upload 6-second clips, it fails to meet the demand.

Moreover, with Instagram and Snapchat, where users can post interesting and longer clips, with a plethora of other options, Vine was bound to fall.