Twitter reports rising user growth for second quarter

Twitter has defied expectations by reporting user growth in the second quarter despite fears its popularity might be waning.

This is the second quarter for which the company has reported upward motion in its user base, with 16 million more users logging in across the globe at least once a month. This amounts to a rise of 6.3 per cent to 271 million monthly active users.

Chief Executive Dick Costolo said on an analyst call: "We made progress on multiple fronts across the business, and our financial performance was truly exceptional."

"I came here with one belief, and since being here that belief has only been reinforced: That we can build the largest audience in the world," the company's new chief financial officer, Anthony Noto, added.

It is thought that this continued improvement in the company's performance has come as a result of further concentration on mobile use, with mobile ad revenue rising to $312.2 million. Mobile ads now reportedly amount to 80 per cent of Twitter's total ad sales.

A new type of ad, also being used by rival company Facebook to great success, is designed to encourage app downloads, which leads to more revenue from gaming, travel and e-commerce ads.

Another possible reason for the growth in users for the social media platform is the World Cup, which encouraged football fans to engage with each other using the micro-blogging platform. The site also offered tailored World Cup news, asking users about their favourite teams and displaying the most relevant information in response.

The company also insisted that actual page impressions, during this time and more generally, dwarfed the recorded number of active monthly users.

Twitter is working to improve the experience for these "hundreds of millions" of offline' users, including tweaks to the user profiles, as well as direct messages and real-time alerts for standard members.

Despite the good news and a small profit, Twitter has still reported losses of $144.6 million.

Since 2014's first quarter results turned out to be a disappointment, many changes were made within the company including replacements for the operating chief, financial chief and head of engineering.

Compared to Facebook, which currently has 1.32 billion users, Twitter's user growth appears puny despite the promising results being reported.