How Many People Actually Use Twitter? Q4 Report Reveals All

Twitter has finally released the number of its active users, and while an overall gain of 11 million users for the year might seem like an optimistic turn for the company, the decline in user activity within the last three months of the year might offer a more accurate reading.

For 2019, Twitter has announced their switch to a different measurement metric for user activity they and companies like them have previously used, focusing on monetizable daily active users (mDAUs), or users who can be monetized by methods such as ad exposure, instead of monthly active users (MAUs).

According to a report on the company's Q4 earnings, Twitter calculated a total of 126 million users in 2018, a significant increase from the 115 million users they counted as mDAUs in 2017. Despite these promising numbers, the social media platform also noted a loss of 5 million monthly users in the last quarter of 2018, signaling a steady decline for the company.

On top of this, a projection of a 10 percent revenue crash for Twitter's first fiscal quarter in 2019 could spell out a hard blow for the social media platform. Earnings per share also received a hit, with an adjusted 31 cents vs. 25 cents expected, according to a report by a Refinitiv survey of analysts.

The company's expenses are also predicted to go up by 20 percent.

The downtick might have something to do with the controversies surrounding their user policies, especially in the wake of the Trump administration and the rise of the alt-right and the white nationalist movement.

Like Facebook, Twitter has its fires to quell, from attempting to make amends for what many see as a lax attitude in regards to its harassment policy concerning online bullying to continuing to crack down on incendiary provocateurs like Alex Jones.