Twitter's back on growth trajectory; added 9mn users last quarter

This surely was Twitter's best quarter in terms of user growth since early 2015. Beating all expectations, the micro-blogging site added nine million new users in first three months of 2017, which brings the company’s total to 328 million. That’s the biggest quarter-over-quarter jump for Twitter since early 2015.

In its first-quarter earnings announced on Wednesday, the company reported revenue of $548 million—down 8 percent over the same period last year, but still better than the $511 million expected by analysts.

The surprising momentum, which Twitter attributed to new features and heightened user interest in political news, followed several quarters of stalled user growth that raised questions about Chief Executive Jack Dorsey's leadership and speculations that platform is up for sale.

But looks like, Dorsey's hard work didn't go in vain. The platform's recently established live video streaming service also reported 31 percent more interaction this quarter, with 45 million unique views across more than 800 hours of live video.

Meanwhile, Twitter's daily active users are also up 14 percent over the same quarter last year, which means that its DAU growth is outpacing its total growth. "We're proud to report accelerating growth in daily active usage for the fourth consecutive quarter, up 14 percent year-over-year," Dorsey said.

"We're delivering on our goal to build a service that people love to use, every day, and we're encouraged by the audience growth momentum we saw in the first quarter," he added.