Twitter shares slump to all-time low as user growth stalls

According to Twitter, its monthly active users-not including SMS-only active users-stand at 305 million for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2015. This will enable the users to see the tweets they are most likely to care about at the top of the timeline when they open Twitter after a while.

The San Francisco-based company yesterday reported disappointing fourth-quarter results, adding fuel to investors’ already considerable skepticism about the microblogging site. Shares of the company declined about 3% in after hours trading.

Twitter has been under pressure to prove it can expand beyond its fierce following to be a mainstream society hit. The service’s user base is up 9% year-over-year, but against the past quarter it’s perfectly flat at 320 million. A letter to shareholders said 2015 was a “very strong year”, citing “significant progress” boosting advertising.

“We think there’s a lot of opportunity in our product to fix some broken windows and some confusing aspects of our service that we know are inhibiting growth”, Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said on the earnings call.

Reducing confusionThe change to the way tweets are displayed is in line with management’s efforts to simplify its service so that it’s less confusing, potentially helping the company attract and retain more new users.

On Wednesday, Twitter announced it changed its timeline – as its homepage is known – to show a customized, algorithmic-driven feed of tweets that are thought to be most interesting to each user, rather than the uniform presentation to all of tweets in reverse chronological order. Seasoned Twitter users that are not happy with the move can opt out by changing their settings. It will include only tweets from accounts you follow – not promoted tweets, which companies pay to insert into your feed.

Twitter has introduced a BIG new change – and users aren’t sure how to feel about it.

Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) appears to be counting on the re-tweet of people to boost the pages being visited or keeping visitors engaged more. The company said it will put a stronger focus on live events and video streaming and vowed to hire better engineers and strong board members. Analysts had expected Twitter to report 325 million monthly users, or 1.5 percent growth.

“We have some really weird rules”, Dorsey admitted.

Marcus Messner, an associate journalism professor and social media specialist at Virginia Commonwealth University believed that Twitter needs to rethink its strategies.

Wall Street has placed some heavy expectations on Twitter and similar tech companies, making it hard for them to rise to the occasion. They are adding relevance to recency to give users a better experience.

The good guys at Twitter are all ears for your feedback.