Twitter Struggles to Reignite Its Growth Engine

When Twitter reported its first quarter earnings this week, those who had hoped that the company finally found a way to reignite its user growth were disappointed once more. Instead of reversing the trend and reaccelerating user growth, the company's user growth basically flatlined. Twitter now has 310 million monthly active users, an increase of just 3 percent or 8 million users since last year's March quarter.

Let's compare that number to Facebook user growth: now boasting 1.65 billion active users, the world's largest social network still grew by 15 percent over the past 12 months. During those 12 months, Facebook added 213 million users - more than two thirds of Twitter's entire user base.