Mike Isaac

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At 215 Million Monthly Active Users, Twitter Has a Growth Problem

Twitter has a growth problem.

The company reported more than 215 million monthly active users in its S-1 Filing on Thursday. At the bare minimum, that means that as of June 30, the company has added on average only 15 million monthly active users since the company hit more than 200 million late last year.

What’s unclear, at least from the language in this filing, is today’s number for MAUs. As AllThingsD reported last month, sources indicated that Twitter had averaged in the range of 230 million to 240 million monthly active users just recently. That number, according to sources, could be closer to what Twitter’s actual MAU number is today.

Regardless: Stack that up against Facebook’s 815 million monthly active users the company had at the time of its S-1 filing, and it’s clear: Twitter is big, but it’s no social behemoth.

Twitter drills down a little bit more on a few other areas: The company sees more than 100 million daily active users, and 75 percent of those access the site from a mobile device.

That could be a bright spot for potential investors, who have recently grown more confident in Internet companies’ ability to monetize mobile platforms.

On the one hand, Twitter hopes to jumpstart growth in a few ways over the coming months; the company has sent some of its top chiefs abroad to expand international efforts, Twitter’s highest expected areas of growth in the future, according to the S-1.

And the company also has a massive redesign in the works to its iOS application, with Android and other mobile platforms likely to follow. That new look could court more mainstream users who have often found the service difficult to crack — or at least tough to keep coming back to.

Of course, there’s a caveat here, too. Twitter just bought MoPub, a mobile advertising platform considered one of the most powerful and effective in the industry. As the S-1 notes, Twitter doesn’t just plan to integrate MoPub’s technology into the existing Twitter advertising platform. Twitter also plans “to grow MoPub’s current business, including by extending advertising across the mobile ecosystem through the MoPub exchange.”

In other words, Twitter can still make money by helping other people buy ads — even if they aren’t Twitter ads.

The numbers speak for themselves. Twitter may aim to be the global town square — but it’s certainly not an overcrowded one.

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There’s a lot of attention and PR around Marissa, but their product lineup just kind of blows.

— Om Malik on Bloomberg TV, talking about Yahoo, the September issue of Vogue Magazine, and our overdependence on Google