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Tech

Twitter Plummets as Wall Street Freaks Out Over User Growth

How do you use this thing?

Not even Jack Dorsey can save Twitter.

Twitter shares are trading more than 13 percent lower this morning after the company reported earnings yesterday that left investors wanting. This, despite the fact that the company's revenue for the quarter beat analysts' own expectations!

Wall Street is an unforgiving mistress.

Interim CEO and co-founder Jack Dorsey did manage to win praise from analysts for being realistic about Twitter's problems after he said it was "unacceptable" that many consumers still don't "know why they should use Twitter." Twitter CFO Anthony Noto similarly used blunt language, saying the company has "not made it easy" to understand how to use the product.

Dorsey "provided one of the most cohesive explanations of Twitter's mission as well as challenges we've heard in a long time," cooed one analyst to Bloomberg.

Whether Dorsey remains at Twitter for long remains to be seen. In addition to his duties as interim CEO (he replaced former CEO Dick Costolo in June), Dorsey is also the CEO of mobile payments company Square, which, according to reports, has recently filed to go public.

Twitter's primary problem, according to analysts, is that user growth is anemic, threatening the company's ability to reach mainstream users. With 316 million monthly active users, Twitter is a minnow compared to cash machine Facebook, which had 1.44 billion monthly active users through the end of March.