RIP Twitter? How It Matches Up With Facebook

After a catastrophic three-month period in which Twitter (Swiss: TWTR.SW - news) lost half of its value, investors will be keeping a close eye on fourth-quarter results, which are due out late on Wednesday.

Growth is sluggish, it lost more than $100m last quarter, and it's battling accusations that it doesn't take online abuse seriously.

Its woes even led to the hashtag #RIPTwitter trending worldwide last week - with users pushed to breaking point by a proposed change to the order in which tweets are displayed.

On Wednesday it announced that it will show the best algorithmically selected tweets at the top of users' timelines - but will that be enough?

Here are some of Twitter's weakspots, and how it compares to market leader Facebook (NasdaqGS: FB - news) .

:: User numbers

Facebook: The number of people who are active on Facebook at least once a month stood at 1.6 billion at the end of December.

That's up 14% year-on-year.

Twitter: Despite year-on-year growth, the total number of people using Twitter each month is just a fifth of Facebook's user base.

Around 320 million people logged on each month in the quarter ending 30 September 2015.

Its share price has slipped from $27 in November to $14 today.

:: Profit and loss

Facebook: Business is booming for Mark Zuckerberg's firm - it boasted earnings of $1.6bn in the three months ending 31 December 2015, more than double the amount earned during the same period in 2014.

Twitter: The company founded and run by Jack Dorsey makes a chunky loss - it lost $131m in the three months ending 30 September 2015.

:: Ease of use

Facebook: The onboarding process for Facebook is fairly straightforward, it uses complex algorithms to suggest potential people you might know, and encourages you to fill out your profile step by step.

Once you've added a few friends, Facebook uses algorithms to show the updates and articles it thinks you'll most like to read.

User numbers suggest this works.

Twitter: One of Twitter's problems is that it suggests a bunch of celebrities and high-profile users to follow, based on your interests.

Given they're well-known, and often have hundreds of thousands of followers, you're unlikely to get a response to any messages.

Twitter is also a constant stream of updates, meaning you're likely to miss stuff unless you're logged on all day.

Twitter has acknowledged this and has been playing around with a curated timeline.

On Wednesday it said it would show algorithmically selected "best" tweets to appear at the top of users' timelines, but the feature can be toggled on and off.

:: Outside projects

Facebook: It owns the world's most popular messaging app - WhatsApp - after buying it for $19bn in 2014.

It also bought Instagram for $1bn in 2012, a photo-sharing app which now has more users than Twitter, and is popular with celebrities.

Twitter: Twitter acquired the Periscope live video streaming app in January last year, and the number of users is in the tens of millions.

However, Facebook recently launched similar functionality within its own app.

Twitter also acquired video sharing service Vine in 2012, which allows users to post six-second clips and share them on social media.

Again, Facebook muscled onto its turf by allowing Instagram to host videos too.

:: Abuse and adult content

Facebook: Its locked-down nature means that it's hard for people who you don't know to contact you, and it takes one click to block someone who is bothering you.

Algorithms also hoover up potentially offensive content such as pornographic images, and users can self-police content by reporting things they are concerned about.

Twitter: Women in particular have pointed out that Twitter can be a hostile place, in which mobs can be whipped up in seconds to bombard users with abuse.

Because it's very easy to create a new account, a blocked user can resume abuse within seconds using a new account.

Twitter does not block pornography, or heavily police the network.

However it does try to block accounts which promote terror.

It recently shut down 125,000 Islamic State-related accounts.

:: Leadership

Facebook: Pretty solid. Founder Mark Zuckerberg has headed up the social network since its creation in February 2004.

Twitter: It's messy. The microblogging service was launched in October 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Evan Williams.

Mr Dorsey was chief executive until 2008 when Mr Williams took over.

When he stepped down in 2010, Twitter executive Dick Costolo took over.

Finally, Mr Dorsey returned as CEO in mid-2015 after Mr Costolo's departure.

He juggles the role with his position as chief executive of mobile payments company Square.