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Twitter 'Not Satisfied' With Slow User Growth

Twitter (Xetra: A1W6XZ - news) shares slumped by 11% in after-hours trading after the service confirmed it was still struggling to add users.

Its second quarter revenue was $502m (£321m), above forecasts of $470m to $485m.

That figure is a 61% increase year on year, according to the company’s results.

However, the slowest user growth since Twitter went public in 2013 saw monthly active users creep up from 308 million to 316 million over the quarter.

In comparison, Facebook (NasdaqGS: FB - news) has a massive 1.4 billion monthly users.

Twitter has been struggling to expand its appeal to the mass market.

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"Our Q2 results show good progress in monetisation, but we are not satisfied with our growth in audience," said Jack Dorsey, the site’s co-founder.

Mr Dorsey is temporarily back in charge after the resignation of chief executive Dick Costolo last month.

Mr Costolo stepped down amid shareholder concerns over poor user growth.

Another of Twitter’s ongoing battles is to pull in more advertising revenue – for example by getting users to click on links or download an app.

It currently lags significantly behind its tech rivals.

Research firm eMarketer says Twitter accounted for less than 1% of the $145bn (£93bn) digital advertising market last year.

In comparison, Facebook's share was nearly 8% and Google (Xetra: A0B7FY - news) 's was more than 31%.

Twitter’s results show some progress compared to last year, with Q2 advertising revenue up to $452m from $312m.

The messaging service is still making a loss overall however.

It posted a $136.7m net loss for April to June, compared with $144.6m last year.

Twitter’s closing share price on Tuesday was $36.54, a fall of nearly 4% in 12 months.