Twitter’s revenue — and its net income — soared in the first quarter of 2021, most of which unfolded after ex-President Donald Trump was banned from the platform over his incitement of the January violence at the U.S. Capitol. During a recent appearance on Fox News, Trump claimed that Twitter is “no good anymore,” but — yet again — the former president is apparently way off the mark. As it turns out — again — his egotistical delusion is not an accurate reflection of reality.
Twitter’s overall revenue in the first quarter of this year was $1.04 billion, according to the company, and that number is 28 percent higher than the overall revenue total from the first quarter of 2020, most of which unfolded before the pandemic hit the U.S. Net income at Twitter for the first quarter of 2021 was $68 million, the company also revealed — which is a stark change from the net loss of $8.4 million that the company posted in the first quarter of 2020.
As noted by The New York Times, the “controversy” surrounding Twitter’s removal of Trump from its platform and its actions against a broader coalition of similarly incitement-inclined right-wingers “did not appear to have hurt Twitter’s financial performance in the quarter.” Across the quarter, the number of “daily active users” who see ads when on the site grew by 20 percent to 199 million, as the Times explains. On a similar note, ad revenue for Twitter grew by 32 percent in the first quarter.
Twitter has sought to share “caution” with investors that the company’s growth could imminently slow down after its mid-pandemic boom of active users, but the company has laid out a long-term growth plan to add over 100 million new active users.
During a recent appearance on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s show, Trump said as follows about Twitter:
‘I’m really getting the big word out because we’re doing releases. Every time I do a release, it’s all over the place. It’s better than Twitter, much more elegant than Twitter. And Twitter now is very boring. A lot of people are leaving Twitter. Twitter is becoming very, very boring… When I started with Twitter years ago, it was like a failed thing, concept, media platform. It was failed. And it became exciting. And I think I had a lot to do with it, to be honest with you. It became very exciting. And now it is boring. And it’s no good anymore.’
He is just not accurate.
