Twitter Says It Lost 4 Million Users Last Quarter Due to iOS 8

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Posted February 6, 2015 at 3:35am by iClarified

Twitter is blaming the rollout of iOS 8 for the loss of about 4 million active monthly users, reports Business Insider. The company announced Q4 2014 earnings today and while it beat revenue and EPS estimates, it missed MAU (monthly active users) expectations.

CFO Anthony Noto blamed the decline on iOS 8 saying, "We lost approximately 4 million net users due to rollouts of iOS 8."

How could iOS 8 affect Twitter's active users? In iOS 7 if you are logged into Twitter, the Shared Links section would automatically refresh showing you recent tweets. iOS 8 stopped that automatic polling. In addition, there apparently was an issue where users could not log in following the update to iOS 8.

CEO Dick Costolo offered some more details to Business Insider in a followup call:

"There were two issues. One was Safari auto-polling, and that was 3 million users and we don't expect to get those users back. The other issue that was more complex was an encryption issue related to the Twitter integration into iOS, such that when users integrated, a lot of them weren't able to launch Twitter successfully. That was a much more complex issue, it did not have a one-size-fits-all fix, so the team here worked as quickly as possible to address it but it caused a large number of users to not be able to use the product, even those who were trying repeatedly to figure out ways to get in."

Twitter had 288 million active users during the quarter, missing expectations by 7 million.

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Twitter Says It Lost 4 Million Users Last Quarter Due to iOS 8

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YungKhalifa - February 23, 2015 at 9:45am

Also, Tap to Tweet went away.. and that was one of my favorite features.

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withitnow - February 6, 2015 at 4:07pm

Just a quick check. The shared links in Safari. Is this article saying that iOS 8 removed this? Cause it's still there. Also when I upgraded to iOS 8 my Twitter integration worked fine although I'm sure for some it didn't. But if you want to actively use Twitter, the integrated sign in under settings isn't the way people do it. They use apps. And if iOS even caused a problem with the official app, there is a vast number of other clients out there.

Chip - February 6, 2015 at 12:41pm

Actually Twitter is the problem. I had tweetbot could not send tweets however other apps worked fine.

stevenlacross - February 6, 2015 at 1:24pm

It was the app

Chip - February 6, 2015 at 12:39pm

Lies, lies and more lies.

PaladinLV - February 6, 2015 at 8:02am

So because Tweeter didn't use the Betas to update their software that's Apple's Fault? @Twitter - FO!

Steve Gate - February 6, 2015 at 5:14am

Let the blame game begin... Shame on them!

gamerscul9870 - February 6, 2015 at 4:43am

Twit-tur(d).

MUKAI - February 6, 2015 at 4:41am

Twatter!

That's their problem - February 6, 2015 at 3:45am

They should know better... Every time a new OS is released, dev's are expected to update their apps to function with the update, this has been the expectation every time an OS has been released in the past, and it has not changed since then, clearly Twitter is lacking behind on updates if this is the case.

gamerscul9870 - February 6, 2015 at 3:42am

I am using Twitter perfectly fine running iOS 8 on it! If this is a problem in any way, I'd say it's Twitter. Some social apps are doing bad like the new snapchat updates and how many adore the old youtube looking app, so Twitter Mose have some downsides to cause this as well, but so what then, just use a computer.

gamerscul9870 - February 6, 2015 at 3:46am

Must have*