Twitter's Mobile Revenue Gets a Bump, But Is It Enough?
This is a single insight from This Week in Apps #107 - Another Viral Success Story???. Check out the full article for more insights.
I've been following Twitter's push for mobile revenue since the platform got serious about it last year. With March behind us, it's time to look at Twitter's mobile revenue in Q1.
The good news is that it grew.
US revenue grew 16% in March, getting Twitter to a little over $250,000 of net revenue, according to our estimates. It's a nice bump considering the teeny tiny growth Twitter's revenue saw in February, but is it enough for this new revenue channel to become serious?
The way I see it, the correct answer is yes and no. Let me explain.
Yes - Twitter's users don't know it as a paid service. They're not used to it, and they don't expect to pay for tweeting. This means that it'll take time to get them used to it, and it'll also take time for the platform to evolve with monetization in mind. So, given enough time and effort from Twitter, this can become a serious revenue source.
No - This isn't really Twitter's revenue but rather the creators that monetize through Twitter. Every major platform is competing over creators right now, and most other platforms already have both the tools and demand for creators to get rich. Twitter is taking its time in expanding its creator pool, and losing potential creators in the process.
These two are very extreme, so I imagine the real future lies somewhere in the middle. A sign of this happening will be Twitter opening its program so everyone can become a creator and also adding more features to Twitter Blue, which will get its users more used to paying for what up until recently was a fully free platform.
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All figures included in this report are estimated. Unless specified otherwise, estimated revenue is always net, meaning it's the amount the developer earned after Apple and Google took their fee.
