Twitter still struggling to grow as rivals race ahead

Twitter stock fell by 10% in after hours trading.

Average monthly active users came in at 313 million, slightly higher than analyst estimates for about 312.1 million MAUs , according to StreetAccount.

The investors are anxious about the social media company’s weak performance reflected by its sluggish user growth and the amount of time each user spends on the networking site. Outside the United States, Twitter had 247 million monthly average users last quarter, up 4 percent from the previous year, and up from 245 million during the first quarter of 2016.

Revenue rose about 20% to $602m, missing the estimate of $606.8m. Although the terms are not disclosed yet, it is expected that Twitter will be paid around $10 million for the streaming rights. That’s a slight increase from 310 million in Q1 of 2016, and 305 million in Q4 of 2015.

Since then, the tech firm has faced layoffs and a number of executive departures, but it also has made product changes and hired new employees.

Brazil has recently become home to the second-largest Twitter population in the world, with 27.7 million users, followed by Japan (25.9 million) and Mexico (23.5 million), according to eMarketer. eMarketer further predicts that massive recent user gains in India could see that country tie Brazil for second-largest non-U.S. Twitter base by 2019.

So, if you want to make Jack Dorsey happy, you absolutely shouldn’t do that. It is also working to better define its role in social media as it rolled out a video ad this week that showed it as the place to go for live news, updates and discussion about current events.

Debra Aho Williamson, principal analyst at eMarketer, said she expected Twitter to remain “highly relevant” as a real-time communications channel for news and cultural events, and that its move into live streaming will help too.

There certainly have been some changes: Twitter has tweaked its basic format by instituting algorithmic changes in the timeline to surface more “sticky” Tweets rather than chronological Tweets; and it has contemplated ways of extending its 140-character limit: these are examples of how the company has tried to address some of the complaints.

And it’s trying to make more headway into new areas like the currently-trendy area of VR and AR, such as with its recent acquisition of Magic Pony Technologies. One of the biggies that we’ll be listening for on the call is whether the issue of harassment comes up at all.