Revealed: Why Twitter conceals daily active user number

Responding to the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) as to why Twitter is hiding its daily active user (DAU) growth, the company said "the absolute number of DAUs is less important than the percentage change in DAUs".

In a correspondence between the company and SEC, Twitter revealed that the percentage change in DAUs is the key factor to know whether user engagement is increasing or decreasing on a relative basis.

 According to a report on Business Insider on Tuesday, Twitter also believes that revealing its DAU growth will be an unfair comparison to other social networks like Facebook and Snapchat.

 "The company also focuses investors on percentage change rather than absolute DAU numbers to avoid confusion when comparing the company with other companies that disclose information regarding DAUs, but use different definitions of DAUs that may include different segments of their respective user bases," Twitter wrote.

 Twitter has added zero users since first quarter, posting $574 million in revenue in the second quarter in 2017, which is a decrease of five per cent YoY (year-on-year).

 Twitter now has 328 million monthly active users (MAUs) -- the same number it reported in the first quarter of 2017.

 "Monthly active usage (MAU) increased five per cent YoY and daily active usage (DAU) increased 12 per cent YoY, marking the third consecutive quarter of double-digit growth," said Jack Dorsey, Twitter's CEO, in a statement.

 As such, concealing the DAU numbers acts as a silver lining to Twitter's declining monthly user base because DAU growth percentage implies that existing users are engaging with the micro-blogging site more.