How is Twitter losing so much money???

Twitter has built an advertising and data-licensing business that the company expects to generate more than $2 billion in revenue this year. But it’s still in the red.

During this year’s first quarter, which Twitter reported today, the company lost $162 million despite bringing in $436 million in revenue. Since its IPO in late 2013, it has lost a cumulative $1.25 billion over six quarters.

Facebook, too, lost money for a few quarters after it went public. But it quickly turned things around and became profitable. Six quarters into its life as a public company, Facebook had generated almost $1 billion in cumulative profit. Now, some three years after going public, it has made almost $5 billion.

Google play:

Twitter strikes Google ad deal after weak Q1 • 10:29 PM

Eric Jhonsa, SA News Editor

• On a day that it posted a Q1 sales miss (a little ahead of schedule) and cut its full-year guidance, Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) announces it's partnering with Google's (NASDAQ:GOOG) DoubleClick unit (a giant in the display ad space) to allow Twitter advertisers using DoubleClick to "measure when conversions result from views and other actions on Twitter."
• Notably, Twitter/DoubleClick plan to give advertisers "a new attribution model in DoubleClick to get a fuller understanding of how Twitter Ads served on mobile or desktop drive conversions for them across the web." That could point to the (anonymous) use of Twitter profiles to track ad conversions. Also: The companies plan to make Twitter ad inventory available through DoubleClick Bid Manager, a widely-used ad-buying platform supporting many online ad exchanges.
• The addition of Twitter as a partner is a notable win for DoubleClick as it tries to fend off Facebook, which last fall launched a new version of its Atlas ad server/measurement platform that tracks the performance of ads seen by Facebook users both on its site/apps and others. Facebook is counting on its anonymous linking of user profiles with ad measurement to give it an edge against DoubleClick and other rivals relying on cookies.
• Meanwhile, Twitter's Q1 CC (live blog) failed to cheer up investors. The company mentioned Q2 user growth is off to a "slow start," and that ad click rates (CTRs) declined Q/Q in Q1 due to a mix shift towards formats with lower CTRs. Ad load was flat, and app install ads (a format Facebook has seen huge success with) underperformed.
• On the bright side, CEO Dick Costolo noted more than 1M people signed up for its Periscope live-streaming app in its first 10 days, that Twitter has seen "orders of magnitude" more native video on its site following the launch of a 30-second video platform in January, and that the company is working with Apple on a Spotlight search integration deal. CFO Anthony Noto stated Twitter will begin counting users of its SMS follow service (there are currently ~6M) as MAUs.
• Twitter fell 1.6% in AH trading after dropping 18.2% in regular trading on account of its results. Shares are now at $41.58.
• Three months ago: Google, Twitter strike deal to add tweets to search results

Little by little Google is positioning to be the eventual acquirer of Twitter.