Parag Agrawal has just delivered Twitter’s first significant business update as CEO. An increase of 13 percent year over year, but well below the 218.6 million some experts projected, CNBC reported on its average monetizable daily active users (mDAU). Only six million new mDAUs have joined Twitter in the past quarter: one million in the United States and five million elsewhere. A 37% year-over-year rise in total sales was expected for 2021, with revenues reaching $5.08 billion.
Twitter’s new CEO Clings to Growth
Twitter had hoped for far faster growth than this, even though the lines are all pointing in the correct direction. A target of 315 million average monetizable daily active users has been set by Twitter by the end of 2023. Continuing at this pace, it will fall significantly short of this target.
The company, despite the difficulties it faces, continues to pursue its original aim. The company’s CFO Ned Segal said in a statement that “there are no changes to our goals of 315 million average mDAU in Q4 2023.”
Agrawal has promised to speed up the company’s development. Twitter announced in late November that it had acquired the messaging platform Quill in order to improve its direct messaging features, and the platform has recently added support for NFT profile pictures in January and automatic video captions in December. This acquisition was announced after his appointment was announced.
Prior to Jack Dorsey’s departure, Twitter’s product launch pace had increased significantly. Social audio feature Spaces has been in the works, as has the launch of a subscription service called Twitter Blue, as well as the addition of features for artists like the Super Follow function and Tip Jars in an effort to attract more users.
As CEO, Agrawal has restructured Twitter into three major pillars:
Consumer, Revenue, and Core Tech. Former engineering leader Michal Montano, design and research chief Dantley Davis, security chief Peiter Zatko, and chief information security officer Rinki Sethi have all subsequently left the company, as revealed by the New York Times last month.