Late last week, Twitter reported better than expected earnings for the fourth quarter of 2014. But regrettably for the microblogging giant, the company’s user base fell slightly short of estimates.
Twitter confirmed Thursday that it now has 288 million monthly active users. Analysts were expecting that number to be 295 million.
So what hampered he growth of Twitter’s user base? iOS 8 might have been a troublesome factor, say execs for the social media behemoth.
“We lost approximately 4 million net users due to rollouts of iOS 8,” says Twitter CFO Anthony Noto.
Not surprisingly, some were dubious about the provided excuse. But Noto may have a point.
“In iOS 7, if you are logged into Twitter, the Shared Links section will automatically show you recent tweets from people on your connected Twitter accounts,” Business Insider explains. “iOS 8 got rid of that automatic polling, so tweets weren’t immediately up to date. You can also follow RSS feeds in the Shared Links section, which may have reduced the prominence of Twitter links there. Twitter said that another 1 million people dropped out as they upgraded and could not get their passwords to work because of an encryption issue.”
So, is Twitter right to pin blame on iOS 8, or is the microblogging platform just grasping at excuses? Please weigh in with your two cents below.
