Twitter's Biggest Problem Isn't Going Anywhere

For the past few years, Twitter Inc TWTR's investors had to contend with a poor user growth profile. Yet an encouraging third-quarter earnings beat last week may give some the impression that its problems have passed; however, that isn't the case at all.

Twitter's "lackluster" user growth profile over the past few years was likely magnified when the company acknowledged a mistake in how it calculated monthly active users over the years, according to Statista. The social media company now boasts 330 million active users, which implies it has added as little as 23 million new users over the past two years. On the high-end, it could have added 25 million users when factoring in metrics prior to the fourth quarter of 2016 weren't restated from the miscalculation.

Meanwhile, Twitter's active user base grew by four million over the past quarter, which is "nothing to brag about," Statista said.

Twitter Versus Peers

Twitter's third-quarter earnings report shows that the social media platform added 23 million net active users over the past two years, Statista also wrote. This appears to be minuscule compared to Facebook Inc FB's core platform, which added a net 461 million monthly active users over the same period.

Here is Statista's chart, which shows how Twitter stacks up to its peers in monthly active user growth over the past two years.

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