Celebrity megaphone fails to lure ordinary users to Twitter

NEW YORK -- Many people have heard of Twitter. Not enough of them are signing up to use it.

Twitter's role as a megaphone for the U.S. president, countless celebrities and businesses hasn't attracted regular people to the service -- not in the way Facebook has, or even Instagram and Snapchat.

The San Francisco company's latest earnings report and dismal forecast suggest this is unlikely to change any time soon.

CEO Jack Dorsey acknowledged long ago Twitter needs to do more to convince people it's useful.

"The whole world is watching Twitter. While we may not be meeting everyone's growth expectations, there's one thing that continues to grow and outpace our peers: Twitter's influence and impact," Dorsey said in a conference call with analysts Thursday. "You don't go a day without hearing about Twitter."

But that doesn't amount to much if Twitter can't translate influence into boosting its user base, advertising and revenue.

Rumors of a potential sale of the company long have swirled, but no buyers have emerged. Twitter has dismissed such speculation, doubling down instead on making the service safer, differentiating it from rivals and becoming profitable for the first time in 2017.

While Dorsey and Twitter have taken major steps recently to address some of users' biggest concerns, including clamping down on hate speech and abuse, this has yet to make a notable difference in drawing new users.

For the final three months of 2016, Twitter averaged 319 million monthly users, up just 4 percent from a year ago. Meanwhile, Twitter has yet to address other issues, including simple ones such as the ability to edit tweets.

"Just like Myspace, perhaps, Twitter does not (want) to 'change the formula' for fear of losing its unique simple user experience," Mark Skilton, a professor at Warwick Business School, wrote in an email. "But the shareholders and CEO Jack Dorsey are running out of time."

Twitter's revenue growth has stalled for more than two years, and the company is cutting costs and shuffling executives. Dorsey, the Twitter co-founder who rejoined the company in late 2015 with hopes of reviving it, called 2016 "a transformative year as we reset and focused on why people use Twitter: It's the fastest way to see what's happening and what everyone's talking about."

Even before the election, Donald Trump used Twitter like no other presidential candidate, firing out broadsides and accolades and generating headlines with 140-character missives.

His election has created a more active landscape for Twitter. Average daily active usage rose 11 percent compared with the same time last year. But Trump's tweets haven't inspired people to sign up for the service en masse. The increased usage is mostly among existing users.