Twitter shares soar after second quarter earnings beat estimates

A close-up view of the homepage of the microblogging website Twitter (GETTY IMAGES)

Twitter's second quarter revenues more than doubled to $312m (£184m) helped by the World Cup and new products. Shares rose more than 25 per cent in after hours trading.

The San Francisco-based microblogging site’s average number of monthly active users rose 24 per cent to 271 million, allaying fears about its rate of growth. Most of growth came from overseas, boosted by the World Cup in Brazil, but even in the US Twitter managed to add 3 million new users in the quarter.

Advertising revenues soared 129 per cent to $277m, with the company saying that 81 per cent of that came from mobile advertising. In comparison Facebook, which has 1.3 billion monthly active users, recently reported that 62 per cent of its ad revenues came from mobile.

Dick Costolo, the chief executive of Twitter said: “We remain focused on driving increased user growth and engagement, and by developing new product experiences, like the one we built around the World Cup, we believe we can extend Twitter's appeal to an even broader audience.”