Twitter: Daily active users increased 24% to 166 million in 1Q20

Affected by seasonal factors, product improvements and people's discussion of the COVID-19 pandemic, Twitter's monetizable mdau increased by 24% year-on-year in 1Q20, with a net increase of 14 million users to 166 million in the quarter. The DAUs in the top 10 markets increased by more than double digits year-on-year, with the U.S. market DAU increasing by 17% and the international market DAU increasing by 26%.

Revenue in the first quarter was $808 million, up 3% year-on-year, reflecting strong growth at the start of the year, but this growth was also dragged down by the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic had a significant impact on advertising revenue, with advertising revenue down 27% year-on-year from March 11 to the end of the month, especially in the United States in March. However, as the epidemic in the Japanese market eased and quarantine ended, advertising weakness began to improve.

Progress was made in the first quarter on two major priorities for commercial products. The new ad server reconstruction will be completed in the second quarter; projects such as MAP, which aims to increase performance advertising revenue, entered testing

User usage and CTR increased, and the number of ad interactions grew by 25%, but the reduction in advertising demand led to a 19% decrease in interaction costs.

The decrease in expenses partially offset the decline in revenue, with an operating loss of $7 million and a net loss of $8 million. Operating costs increased 8% year-on-year to $284 million, R&D expenses increased 37% year-on-year to $200 million, sales and marketing expenses increased 8% year-on-year to $221 million, and administrative expenses increased 42% year-on-year to $109 million.

In the first quarter, the company's product progress included:

Topics: Progress has been made in organizing around topics and events, with users now able to subscribe to 2,200 topics in 6 languages.

Lists: A sorting algorithm has been added to list content to help users find personalized content faster;

Explore: Give users the ability to choose their location and provide content based on the new location when the user's location changes

Fleets: Fleets are a new type of tweet that's very similar to Snapchat Stories, and currently the feature is only available in Brazil.

In the first quarter, Twitter made more than 30 updates to content health, including reducing bullying, combating misleading information, and ensuring the fidelity of election topics.

The company continues to strengthen cooperation in short videos and live broadcast content. During the epidemic, more and more organizations have released content.

The company planned to increase its headcount by 20% at the beginning of 2020. In view of the current situation, the company will slow down the pace of recruitment.