Twitter continues its loss-making streak posting slowest revenue growth since it went public

Twitter just posted the slowest revenue growth since it went public four years ago thus continuing its loss making streak.

The social media company reported its fourth-quarter earnings for 2016. The total loss widened to $167m (£133m) compared to $90m the year before. However, revenue was up slightly at $717m over $710m in Q4 2015.

Although the user base for the quarter rose by 4% to a total tally of 319 million, it is way behind its competitor Facebook, which recently announced a total user base of 1.86 billion monthly users.

The social media platform has struggled togain advertising revenues. The ad revenue declined a further 0.5% to $638m in the fourth quarter of 2016 compared to the year before. The company said it only expects advertising revenue growth to lag user growth during 2017.

The lack of constant revenue growth, quarter after quarter, had forced shareholders last year to scout for buyers despite reports indicating chief executive Jack Dorsey was not too happy about it. Although some bidders were rumoured to have had talks including Google and Disney, Salesforce was touted to be the front runner. Unfortunately for Twitter, it too backed out and did not make any final offer to acquire Twitter.

Despite such gloom, Dorsey told analysts that he seemed positive and Twitter was investing in machine learning and searching for ways to engage advertisers.

"It will take time to show the results we all want to see, and we're moving forward aggressively. The whole world is watching Twitter," he said.