Twitter业绩缘何惊倒华尔街

    周二的财报已经证明，Twitter并不像人们想象的那样四面楚歌。

    它刚发布的第二季度财报表现极为抢眼，让华尔街的唱衰者大吃一惊。Twitter第二季度的收入达到3.12亿美元，比去年同期翻了一倍还多。与此同时，Twitter的活跃用户增势喜人，用户数同比增加了24%，达到2.71亿人次。这使得Twitter的股价在周三上涨20%，收盘于46.3美元。

    考虑到在过去三个季度中，这家社交网络的盈利情况令人失望，华尔街预计Twitter将会遭遇重挫，但这次Twitter轻松地让他们大跌眼镜。

    贝雅公司（Robert W. Baird & Co.）的分析师科林•塞巴斯蒂安认为，Twitter近几个月的成功主要应归功于一些全球事件，像冬奥会和世界杯，这些活动凸显了Twitter作为即时信息源的价值。他指出，用户在Twitter上每天要发出5亿条推文，足以体现出这项服务在全球的重要性。

    塞巴斯蒂安解释道：“Twitter还在不断改进应用，增强它们的功能，比如加入照片和视频等富媒体。”

    巴克莱资本（Barclays Capital）的分析师保罗•沃格尔表示，Twitter用户群的增长也增加了其广告点击率——确切地说，是每年增加250%以上。沃格尔预计，为了保持这一势头，Twitter很快就会把重心更多地倾向视频工具，这样美国橄榄球联盟（National Football League）等营销商就能像在其他网站一样，利用这一服务创建和发布短片。

    Twitter在这方面已经取得了一定进步。去年，Twitter推出了视频广告产品Amplify，可以让各品牌和电视网络在Twitter上分享现场直播或预先录制好的视频。英国广播公司美国频道（BBC America）、福克斯（FOX）和天气频道（Weather Channel）成为了他们的第一批合作伙伴。迄今为止，Amplify主要在体育赛事和颁奖典礼上为Twitter用户所使用。在2013年的美国网球公开赛上，喜力（Heineken）利用Amplify发布了124条带视频的推文，被近1,200万用户观看。这次活动取得了相当的成功，因此喜力决定在今年即将到来的网球公开赛上继续使用这一产品。在本周三的财报会议上，Twitter首席执行官迪克•科斯特罗强调了Amplify具有“与电视和其他内容创造者合作，帮助他们增加受众”的价值。

    在Twitter改善综合体验的过程中，这类产品将起到关键作用，决定其第二季度的收益能否开启一波盈利高潮。尽管Twitter的收入和用户增长量令人吃惊，但他们仍然亏损了1.45亿美元，其部分原因是股权补偿——这是去年同期4,200万美元亏损的三倍多。（财富中文网）

    译者：严匡正

    As Tuesday’s earnings proved, Twitter isn’t quite the beleaguered business people thought it was.

    It reported strong second quarter results that surprised the Wall Street naysayers. Revenue more than doubled to $312 million from the same time last year. Meanwhile, the number of active users grew a very healthy 24% to 271 million. As a result, Twitter’s shares gained 20% on Wednesday to close at $46.30.

    That Twitter handily trumped Wall Street’s expectations signals a significant reversal, given that over the last three quarters, the social network’s earnings have disappointed.

    Colin Sebastian, an analyst with Robert W. Baird & Co., chalks up much of Twitter’s success in recent months to global events like the Olympics and World Cup that helped highlight the value of Twitter as a source for information on-the-fly. He pointed to Twitter’s users tapping out 500 million tweets daily as a sign of just how much of the service has become a global water cooler.

    “The company continues to improve applications and make it more useful, such as adding rich media, like photos and videos,” Sebastian explained.

    Paul Vogel, a Barclays Capital analyst, said that Twitter’s growing user base is also clicking on more advertisements — on the order of 250% more year-over-year, to be exact. To keep the ad momentum going, Vogel expects Twitter to soon focus more on video tools that would let marketers like the National Football League create and tweet brief clips on the service as well as on other sites.

    Twitter has already made some headway there. Last year, Twitter introduced Amplify, a video advertising product that lets brands and TV networks share live or pre-recorded video on Twitter. Initial partners included BBC America, FOX and The Weather Channel. To date, Amplify has largely been used to reach Twitter users during live events like sports and awards shows. For the 2013 U.S. Open tennis tournament, Heineken beer used Amplify to send out 124 Tweets with video, which was viewed by nearly 12 million users. The campaign was successful enough that Heineken plans to use Amplify again at this year’s upcoming tournament. On Wednesday’s earning call, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo emphasized the value of Amplify “to partner with TV and other content creators and help them increase their audiences.”

    Such products, along with Twitter’s improvement of the overall experience, will remain key to deciding whether its second-quarter earnings are the start of a positive trend towards profitability. Despite surprising revenue and user growth, Twitter still reported $145 million in losses, partly due to stock-based compensation — over three times the $42 million loss from the same period last year.