Twitter logs losing quarter as user base stalls

Twitter said Wednesday its user base growth stalled at the end of last year, holding at 320 million, in a disappointing quarterly update for the struggling messaging platform.

Twitter shares dropped some 2.4 percent in after-market trades that followed release of its latest earnings report.

Twitter's monthly active user base, unchanged from the previous quarter, is being closely watched to see if it connecting with more people and keeping pace with other social networks.

But the latest figures were a disappointment. And excluding those who follow Twitter using text messaging, the user base declined slightly to 305 million from 307 million in the previous quarter.

The San Francisco-based one-to-many messaging platform reported a net loss of $90.2 million on revenue that climbed 48 percent to $710 million when compared to the same period a year earlier.

Twitter revenue for the full year was up 58 percent to $2.2 billion, according to the earnings report.

Twitter has been under pressure to prove it expand beyond its fierce following to be a mainstream society hit.

But its outlook for the current quarter failed to allay concerns, with revenue growth below most forecasts.

Twitter announced earlier Wednesday it was revamping its timeline, allowing the "best" tweets to rise to the top, despite warnings of a revolt from members loyal to the real-time flow of the messaging platform.