Twitter plummets 11% after missing quarterly revenue estimates

Twitter's worries continued on Thursday after the social media group badly missed analysts' expectations for fourth quarter revenue, although it did beat on earnings per share.

Perhaps more worrying for Twitter is its user growth, which was flat once again in the face of competition from other social networks such as Snapchat, Facebook and its Instagram arm.

Analysts had expected Twitter to pick up revenue of $740m, but it reported a disappointing $717m, although that figure was slightly higfher than the same period in 2015.

Earnings per share for the company were 16 cents per share, with an analyst consensus of 12 cents.

Twitter also altered its guidance for the first quarter of 2017 to between $75m and $95m, well below the Wall Street estimates of $191.3bn.

Monthly active users during the quarter was 319m, increasing 0.6% from the 317m it recorded in the third quarter.

Twitter's shares tanked more than 11% in trading before the bell on Thursday after the earnings report.

CEO Jack Dorsey described 2016 as a "transformative year as we reset and focused on why people use Twitter: it's the fastest way to see what's happening and what everyone's talking about".

Analysts suggest Twitter's demise may start to become more exaggerated than ever in coming months if it loses appeal from advertisers' perspectives.

"Twitter is losing traction fast. It is starting to shed once-promising products, such as Vine, and sell off parts of its business, such as its Fabric app development platform," said eMarketer social media analyst Debra Aho Williamson.

"At the same time, some surveys indicate that Twitter is becoming less integral to advertisers' spending plans. That doesn't bode well for future ad revenue growth."