Twitter said its monthly active users (MAU) in Q3 declined by 4 million year-on-year, as it posted a profit for the fourth consecutive quarter.

Average MAUs in Q3 were 326 million due to the impact of a number of factors including “GDPR, decisions we have made to prioritise the health of the platform…as well as a product change that reduced automated usage and a technical issue that temporarily reduced the number of notifications sent,” the company explained in a statement.

The health being referred to was a clampdown on “spammy, or malicious accounts” and it had already warned about the impact this would have on MAU in its Q2 earnings.

Daily active users were on the rise though, growing 9 per cent in Q3, “driven by a combination of organic growth, marketing, and product improvements” (Twitter doesn’t reveal actual figures for this metric).

Still profitable
During Q3, the social media company generated net income of $789 million compared with a $21 million loss in Q3 2017: revenue hit $758 million in the recent quarter, an increase of 29 per cent.

Total advertising revenue was $650 million, also an increase of 29 per cent, with video ad formats accounting for more than half of the figure.

Jack Dorsey, Twitter’s CEO said: “We’re continuing to introduce improvements that make it easier for people to follow events, topics and interests on Twitter…This quarter’s strong results prove we can prioritise the long-term health of Twitter while growing the number of people who participate in public conversation.”

CFO Ned Segal added: “Our third quarter results reflect our success with advertisers…and better than expected growth across most products and geographies”.

“We are demonstrating Twitter’s unique value proposition for advertisers through innovative ad formats, better relevance and continued improvement in ROI. Advertisers are choosing Twitter to reach the most valuable audience when they are most receptive,” he added.