Sign up FAST! Login

The Most Important Fact Buried In Twitter's 70-Page Investor Slideshow: 3.7 billion projected 2017 smartphone users.


Stashed in: Facts, Business Facts, Mobile!, Active Users, MOBILE, Advertising, Valuation, Twitter, Mobile Ads!, Factoids, Mobile Dev!

To save this post, select a stash from drop-down menu or type in a new one:

Jim Edwards explains:

Twitter's 70-something page investor slideshow is out and we have the whole thing right here. It summarizes what the company does, how it makes money, how it expects to grow in the future, and why investors should buy its stock when TWTR goes public on Nov. 6.

But if you've been following the company closely you'll know that slide 41 is the most important part of the presentation. See the image above.

Why would Twitter need to actually say that it is a "mainstream product"?

The answer is that when it filed its S-1 disclosure with the SEC, many people were shocked to discover that Twitter had only about 50 million users in the U.S., and 230 million users overall. Its S-1 suggested that the product was used by elite members of society, rather than ordinary folk:

"Our users include millions of people from around the world, as well as influential individuals and organizations, such as world leaders, government officials, celebrities, athletes, journalists, sports teams, media outlets and brands."

It's true that Twitter users over-index among those who always need to know what's happening now, such as journalists and PR people.

On top of that, people noticed that Twitter's user growth was already slowing, particularly in the U.S.

The conclusion from all this could be that with Twitter confined as a business-to-business app for communications industry types, its overall revenue growth might be limited too. (In fact, Twitter's revenues are not directly linked to the number of its users.)

So this slide appears to be an attempt to correct all that: "Twitter is not a niche product!," the slide screams. It's making it loud and clear that given a total universe of about 4 billion smartphone users, Twitter has plenty of room to grow.

You May Also Like: