“A core value for Twitter as a company is to reach every person on the planet. In 2014 we want to build a Twitter that is accessible to everyone,” says Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter in yesterday’s Q4 earnings call. Twitter reports having has 241 million monthly active users worldwide, up 30% from last year, with 54 million of those users in the United States.

With only 24.9% of U.S. consumers actively using Twitter, according to BIA/Kelsey’s Consumer Commerce Monitor™, it looks like such an expansive reach is going to be a challenge for social media’s newest public company.

To tackle this feat Twitter mentioned several changes it has or will make to stimulate user growth. As Twitter users may have noticed, in-line social actions and media powered timelines were introduced in October which increased user interaction such as favorites and retweets by 34% in Q4. Search is also a quickly growing feature with 120% increase in total search year over year while simpler user onboarding experiences with native mobile signup are aimed to reengage inactive users. Another new feature that was introduced, and is a new concept for Twitter, was direct messaging. Messaging is up 25% since it was implemented.

The main device that users are accessing their Twitter accounts on is mobile. More than 75% of total ad revenue is being generated through mobile devices.

With all of this focus on growing their user reach, we have to ask; what is twitter doing for advertisers? According to Mike Gupta, CFO at Twitter, ad engagement is up more than 600% from the prior year. The increase in ad engagement is a combination of the improved prediction and targeting capabilities by twitter and the realized importance of the native ad by advertisers. Not only that but “for large branded folks, Twitter in TV is much a part of the conversation,” says Gupta “TV ad recall was up roughly 14% or so for folks who are using Twitter.”

For SMBs, there’s an apparent gap between SMB’s sentiments about Twitter and the company’s traction with small business advertisers. Twitter made little mention of SMB advertisers. According to BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor™, 44.4% of local SMBs consider social media to be a very high or extremely high future marketing priority. Not only that, but SMBs are already very heavily engaged on Twitter as users. Nearly 50% of SMB’s have a Twitter account or plan to get one in the next year. Of those who have one, over 78% of SMBs update their Twitter account daily or weekly.

Additional Key Highlights

–Full year revenue is expected to be in the range of $1.15 to $1.2 billion

–Employee headcount is now over 2,700

–International revenue represents 27% of total revenue

The post Twitter’s Q4 2013 Earnings Call: Big Plans for User Engagement, No Plans for SMB Advertisers appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.

“A core value for Twitter as a company is to reach every person on the planet. In 2014 we want to build a Twitter that is accessible to everyone,” says Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter in yesterday’s Q4 earnings call. Twitter reports having has 241 million monthly active users worldwide, up 30% from last year, with 54 million of those users in the United States.

With only 24.9% of U.S. consumers actively using Twitter, according to BIA/Kelsey’s Consumer Commerce Monitor?, it looks like such an expansive reach is going to be a challenge for social media’s newest public company.

To tackle this feat Twitter mentioned several changes it has or will make to stimulate user growth. As Twitter users may have noticed, in-line social actions and media powered timelines were introduced in October which increased user interaction such as favorites and retweets by 34% in Q4. Search is also a quickly growing feature with 120% increase in total search year over year while simpler user onboarding experiences with native mobile signup are aimed to reengage inactive users. Another new feature that was introduced, and is a new concept for Twitter, was direct messaging. Messaging is up 25% since it was implemented.

The main device that users are accessing their Twitter accounts on is mobile. More than 75% of total ad revenue is being generated through mobile devices.

With all of this focus on growing their user reach, we have to ask; what is twitter doing for advertisers? According to Mike Gupta, CFO at Twitter, ad engagement is up more than 600% from the prior year. The increase in ad engagement is a combination of the improved prediction and targeting capabilities by twitter and the realized importance of the native ad by advertisers. Not only that but “for large branded folks, Twitter in TV is much a part of the conversation,” says Gupta “TV ad recall was up roughly 14% or so for folks who are using Twitter.”

For SMBs, there’s an apparent gap between SMB’s sentiments about Twitter and the company’s traction with small business advertisers. Twitter made little mention of SMB advertisers. According to BIA/Kelsey’s Local Commerce Monitor?, 44.4% of local SMBs consider social media to be a very high or extremely high future marketing priority. Not only that, but SMBs are already very heavily engaged on Twitter as users. Nearly 50% of SMB’s have a Twitter account or plan to get one in the next year. Of those who have one, over 78% of SMBs update their Twitter account daily or weekly.

Additional Key Highlights

–Full year revenue is expected to be in the range of $1.15 to $1.2 billion

–Employee headcount is now over 2,700

–International revenue represents 27% of total revenue

The post Twitter's Q4 2013 Earnings Call: Big Plans for User Engagement, No Plans for SMB Advertisers appeared first on BIA/Kelsey - Local Media Watch.