The First Year For Twitter's In-App Revenue Was Full of Ups and Downs
This is a single insight from This Week in Apps #134 - Is It Finally Happening???. Check out the full article for more insights.
Every month I look at Twitter's monthly recurring revenue (MRR), but September was a special month, marking a year of mobile revenue for the platform.
Let's have a look at revenue and then talk about what this means and where (I think) it's going. There's good and bad news.
According to our revenue estimates, Twitter's MRR in September was $545K. If this is the first time you're seeing this number I feel compelled to remind this is thousands and not millions.
And if you remember last month's total you'll notice September was lower, double-digits lower. We've seen Twitter's revenue stagnate over the summer but this is the first recorded decline since its in-app purchases rolled out to all.
That's the bad news.
Why is Twitter's revenue so low? Why is it not growing faster? And why is it going down? All good questions.
I keep wanting to see it go up, but there really isn't a good reason for it to, yet, at least. So far what Twitter rolled out is not very exciting, and to move a userbase that never paid, requires something exciting.
On top of the lack of features, many were also locked under some sort of a private-beta or invite-only system. Traditionally, this could result in hype. That's not the case these days because every rival has something more exciting available, drawing both creators and followers away.
That's the main reason, in my opinion, for these numbers, which you'd expect to see from a new startup, not Twitter. But a parodic saga with Elon Musk and high inflation aren't helping either.
The good news is more wishful thinking than real news, but I believe this is easily fixable. I don't know the inner workings of Twitter, but do know they're very capable when they follow the right strategy.
If Elon acquires the platform this might/will change drastically I'm sure. Still an if.
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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.
