In the third quarter of 2020 – the latest results available – the San Francisco-based social media company said it had 187 million monetizable daily active users (mDAU), missing consensus analyst expectations of 195.2 million users, according to IBES data from Refinitiv.
Latin Americans are especially keen on social networks, and Twitter is one of the main platforms in the region. Brazil is often the chosen market by the company for testing new features.
In September 2020, Twitter announced that it would kick off audio tests in direct messages in Brazil.
In March last year, Brazil was also chosen for “ephemeral tweets” tests. Those are tweets that disappear after 24 hours, and they are initially being tested only in Brazil. The company says the “fleets”, as it is calling the new disappearing posts because of their fleeting nature, are a response to the concerns of users turned off by the permanent nature of normal tweets.
In the second quarter of 2020, Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey told analysts that the company was planning to test a new monetization method, based on monthly subscriptions so that its users have access to certain content and features of the social network.
Currently, Twitter’s only stream of income comes from ads on the social network; however “there is a world” in which the platform can also use complementary sources of monetization.