Can Twitter Ever Reach 1 Billion Users?

There have been many comparisons and discussions over how Twitter Inc TWTR can overtake Facebook in terms of users. Some people on the Street, however, have slowly become skeptical of that comparison.

New York Times columnist, Nick Bilton, is one of those skeptics. He was recently on CNBC to discuss outlook for Twitter in 2015 and the challenges it faces in acquiring new users.

"First of all, I feel bad for any CEO whose company's stock goes up when there is talk of him leaving the company," Bilton said. "This has happened with Microsoft and other places. I think one of the things is really interesting, I saw Bob Peck on here this week talking about Costolo possibly moving and leaving and so on. One of the things that I think was really fascinating was his focus on MAUs and it's something that investors have been focused on from the beginning of Twitter -- monthly active users. I think it’s a metric to be looking at."

Related Link: Will Dick Costolo Continue As Twitter's CEO In 2015?

He continued, "If you look in the news every single day, Twitter is mentioned. It’s mentioned today [Wednesday] with the police shooting. It's mentioned with if you look at the Sony hacks […]the President, all these different people are making announcements on this service... I think whether they bring a new CEO or a new product person or whatever it is, the investor needs to start looking at it not just from this monthly active users numbers, but from all these other metrics, too."

Bilton thinks that Twitter will never grow to over a billion users because "it's designed for media consumption, it's designed for news addicts."