Last Wednesday Twitter released its first quarterly report since going public in November and stock market traders were stunned. The report showed that user growth has consistently decreased in the past three months, causing stocks to plummet in the hours following its release to the public.

To all the worried traders and analysts, I say not everything can be quantified. If history truly does repeat itself and Twitter follows in the footsteps of Facebook, it will be just fine in the long run.

A number that is often overlooked in the madness is the money Twitter brought in this past year. With the help of advertisements placed on user timelines, the company had a fourth-quarter revenue of $242.7 million, crushing analysts’ estimates by $20 million. Twitter’s $0.02 earnings per share were also a pleasant surprise since traders predicted that it would lose two cents per share.

If you consider how Facebook fared following its initial public trade, it would appear Twitter is in good shape. On the day Facebook’s stock went public, it struggled to even stay above the IPO price for most of the day. The decline continued for weeks and the stock lost more than a quarter of its value by the end of its first month on the market. One month in, investors had lost $40 billion and The Wall Street Journal called the situation a “fiasco.”

Facebook is now a multi-billion dollar corporation and regarded as the biggest social media platform in history. Whether it’s the stock market’s volatility or traders’ tendency to set expectations too high, these statistics simply prove that numbers don’t mean much.

Although its user growth seems stagnant, Twitter’s greatest asset remains its influence. By looking at the amount of commercials and television programs encouraging viewers to use a hashtag or a Twitter handle, you wouldn’t guess that the service was underperforming at all.

People go where the celebrities are and the celebrities are tweeting, not updating their Facebook statuses. While its number of users may not match Facebook, Twitter has carved a niche as a real-time information stream that people rely on.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo deflected criticism of his company and offered reasons for the plunge in stock prices. Up until last year, Costolo said, Twitter’s growth was “viral and organic.” He said more effort will be put forth in marketing this year. Costolo also attributed the decline in timeline views to the new threaded conversation feature which reduces the amount of timelines a user loads according to a Feb. 5 Tech Crunch article.

Now that the popularity of being the new kid on the block has worn off, Twitter will have to put some effort into adding users.

The microblogging social network looks to build upon its foundation and add features to attract more of mainstream America. Some are already underway, like “promoted tweets” and a more aesthetically pleasing interface that automatically loads photos and videos. Twitter also hopes to eliminate its inactive accounts and accounts that are deleted shortly after being created.

When asked if the company will ever decide to allow separate apps to be hosted on the site like Facebook does, Costolo said that this doesn’t coincide with Twitter’s brand. In other words, you can’t beat Facebook by becoming Facebook.

Unlike Facebook, Twitter still has massive room to grow and billions of Internet users to gain. To increase its growth, Twitter will have to be innovative and continue to improve the service’s ease of use to attract new members. Regardless of what numbers say, Twitter is here to stay.

Aarick Knighton is a sophomore information management and technology major. His column appears weekly. He can be reached at adknight@syr.edu.

Published on February 12, 2014 at 3:09 am