Twitter Q416 Opening Remarks
Good morning and thanks for joining us.
I want to start our call today by looking back. 2016 was a transformative year for us. Transformations are difficult, and this one was especially challenging. We started 2016 by resetting and focusing on why people use Twitter: the fastest way to see what’s happening and what everyone’s talking about.
We reset and focused on our strengths, and we achieved one of the hardest things to do for a consumer service at scale: we reversed and reaccelerated our usage. We’re thrilled to report that daily active usage accelerated for the 3rd quarter in a row, and we see that strong growth continuing.
We did this by making the experience a little better every single day. It may have felt like we weren’t changing much this past year, but those hundreds of little changes added up to more predictable and sustained growth we will now use as a foundation to be more inventive and take bigger risks. And that’s exactly what we’re now going to do.
We said on our last call that revenue growth will lag usage. As you see in our numbers and our outlook, this has proven to be the case. Our advertisers need the same approach we applied to our consumer service: reset and focus on our strengths. This means clearly differentiating and complementing Twitter’s real-time nature and proving to advertisers that Twitter is easy and works for them and their customers.
2016's challenge was reaccelerating our consumer usage. We did it, and that gives us the confidence we can do it again. 2017's challenge is simplifying and differentiating our revenue products. It will take time to show the results we all want to see, and we’re moving forward aggressively.
The whole world is watching Twitter. While we may not be currently meeting everyone’s growth expectations, there is one thing that continues to grow and outpace our peers: Twitter’s influence and impact.
You don’t go a day without hearing about Twitter. How it was used as the fastest way to send a message to the whole world in an instant. How it carried some of the most important commentary and conversations. How it mobilized people into action. That’s powerful, valuable, fundamental, and the reason we’re all here fighting so hard for this service and company we love.
It’s been hard, it will continue to be hard, and it’s all worth it. Twitter forever changed the way the world communicates, and we will do it again.
And now back to Krista for questions.
Shareholder letter: http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/AMDA-2F526X/3843583848x0x927279/AC2897AE-A9F6-43A7-B150-52300045809C/Q416_ShareholderLetter.pdf
