Dick Costolo On Twitter's Q4 And New Outlook On Google Partnership

The fourth-quarter earnings was a make or break situation for Twitter Inc TWTR CEO Dick Costolo as rumors of him being fired have intensified over the past few weeks. It seems those rumors will die down, at least for now, as the company posted spectacular results on Thursday following the closing bell.

Twitter posted revenues of $497 million, a whooping 97 percent jump from the revenue it posted in the same quarter last year, while net loss shrank from $511 million to $125 million. However, the company disappointed Wall Street with the less than expected growth in monthly active user number, which rose only four million from previous quarter.

Related Link: Twitter 'Crushed The Quarter,' Gains 10%

Costolo was on CNBC to talk about the company’s fourth-quarter numbers and differentiate between the past and current relationship that Twitter has with Google Inc GOOGLGOOG.

"I would say that based on the first month of the year, at least, January, we saw a return to organic growth that coupled with usual seasonal growth in Q1 and product initiatives. Growth product initiatives lead us to conclude that our outlook for Q1 is back to that trend that we saw in the first three quarters of last year,” Costolo said.

What Happened In The Concerning Interim?

“Well, I think that in Q4 we mentioned we had a couple of specific issues that were our issues and we had Q4, [which] is seasonally weak quarter for growth for us, typically. It was just a combination of those things I think that we saw in the Q4,” Costolo replied.

Difference Between Previous And Current Relationship With Google

“I think there is one big, specific difference about the previous relationship we had with Google and this new deal we have and that’s because we are now really pursuing this total audience strategy of our logged-in user base that more than half-a-billion people to come to Twitter as logged-out users, who are now starting to organize experiences and content for, and our syndicated audience,” Costolo said.

“The difference between the previous relationship and now is we’ll be able to pull people from Google Search for events, for kinds of people and for topics into those immediate logged-out experiences that we think are going to be really compelling that we are going to organize for people,” he concluded.