Twitter finally reveals 126 million daily users, 60 million less than Snapchat 

Twitter has finally revealed its daily active user levels, and it’s a lot smaller than many in industry might have anticipated at 126 million.

Its share price dropped 10% on the news.

The fact Twitter has held back on its daily active usage (DAU) for so long, instead preferring to focus on its monthly active usage (MAU), was in itself quite telling.

DAU is the gold standard of platform evaluation since it provides a more accurate portrayal of how much attention a channel has.

Combined with time-spent, which few share consistently, this gives marketers a rounded view of the potential effectiveness of a channel for marketing communications.

How Do The Major Social Players DAU's Stack Up?

For comparison’s sake, the dominant social players’ DAUs rank as follows:

1. Facebook – 1.52 billion DAU
2. Google doesn’t reveal YouTube’s DAU
   • However, with 2 billion MAU it won’t be that far off Facebook
3. Instagram Stories alone has 500 million DAU
   • Instagram proper perhaps sits around 600 – 700 million DAU
4. LinkedIn – approx. 240 million DAU
5. Snapchat – 186 million DAU
6. Twitter 126 million DAU
7. Pinterest has 250+ million MAU, so perhaps has a DAU similar to Twitter’s

Although Twitter’s DAU may come as a surprise for some marketers, the signs have been there for a while.

That said, for those users active on Twitter it is going from strength to strength.

Getting stickier and stickier every quarter. So, in a way, there are positive and negative takeaways from Twiter’s latest quarterly results, depending on your perspective.

Social Media Growth Is Flat; Platform’s Now Focusing On Retention

Studies show that social media is saturated, in developed economies, and any growth in one channel most likely comes at the expense of another elsewhere.

This is why the major social players are working to expand the features and functionality of their offerings. Twitter, for instance, is in the process of redesigning the Twitter user interface to facilitate greater engagement and user interaction. It is also working to secure sports rights, just announcing a tie-in with Optus for UEFA Champions League coverage.

Similarly, 2018 saw the global launch of Facebook Watch, beta launch of Facebook Dating and Instagram has a raft of new shopping features in the pipeline.

Inside every new feature expansion, launched to retain users' attention, lies brand new marketing opportunities, charting a path and future beyond social news feeds for marketers…