Twitter shares fall almost 10% after quarterly results

Twitter saw its loss widen in the third quarter, as user growth fell victim to a slowdown.

The number of active users on the social network rose 23% to 284m, compared with 24% growth in the previous three months, while sales more than doubled to $361.3m, beating the $351m average forecast of Bloomberg analysts.

Since going public in November, the company has pushed heavily into mobile advertising and services for other application developers, shifting away from a policy of relying almost exclusively on its main website to generate traffic and ads.

The social network giant said its third-quarter net loss widened to $175.5m, or 29 cents a share, from $64.6m, or 48 cents, in the same period in 2013, while analysts, on average, had expected a loss of 29 cents.

“Twitter simply hasn’t changed much over the past nine years -- while it has enormous notoriety, that hasn’t translated into an enormous user base,” Nate Elliott, an analyst at Forrester Research, was quoted as saying by Bloomberg. “If the company can’t get more people engaged with its site more often, marketers might shift their focus elsewhere.”

On Monday, Twitter shares were down 8.36% in after-hour trading at 17:00 in New York.