I can’t imagine losing $750 dollars in one day let alone $750 million, but that’s what happened to Twitter (TWTR) co-founders Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey just last week. The problems started coming in when Twitter posted first quarter revenue amounts and lowered their sales forecasts for the future. This sent traders into a complete frenzy and the entire Internet was buzzing with the results.
The main reason for all the buzzing of course was that the general public found out about the first quarter results one hour earlier than they were supposed to. Twitter asserted that the revenue numbers were leaked before Twitter was ready to send them out. It’s amazing that one hour can do so much damage, but it did. In that short amount of time, traders sold Twitter so much that the shares dropped 18% and Twitter ended up posted first quarter revenue amounts and lowered their sales forecasts for the future for a short time to prevent any more damage.
Interestingly enough, it was later found out that the earnings were leaked by a company called Selerity, which uses bots to scan financial results across the web. Selerity says that the earnings were ready available and that they weren’t leaked or hacked, just found. However, others are saying only a very powerful computer could have accessed that information when they did. And still, why did they even tweet it out? Not cool, Selerity.
All the numbers aside, investors have already been concerned about Twitter and the fact that they are growing uses at a snail’s pace. Many are wondering what happened and why Twitter is failing to get its members excited and their revenues on target.
Lest you think Twitter is going down the tubes, it’s important to note that they still had a Q1 revenue of $436 million, which is incredibly significant. The problem is that they projected much higher and, according to an investor report, “the company expects this revenue impact to continue for the remainder of the fiscal year.”
