The bad week in social media is worsening; Twitter hammered

NEW YORK (AP) – Breaking hatred, abuse and trolls online is also damaging Twitter's reputation with investors

The company's stock plunged Friday after announcing a drop in its monthly users and warned that this number could further decline in the coming months. The 20.5% dip comes one day after Facebook lost 19% of its value in a single day.

Twitter says that the long-term stability of its platform is greater than the growth of users. This leaves investors seemingly unable to value the value of the largest companies in the industry, which rely on their potential audience.

Twitter had 335 million monthly users during the quarter, below the expected 339 million Wall Street, and down slightly from 336 million in the first quarter. This overshadowed a strong monthly user growth of 3 percent over the previous year.

The company said its monthly number of users could continue to fall in the "one-digit mid-digit figures" in the third quarter. was the second worst loss of Twitter since it became public in November 2013, the action has again doubled in value over the past 12 months.

Long criticized for allowing bad behavior to plague its platform, Twitter has begun to crack down, ban accounts that violate its conditions and make others less visible.

Twitter is now trying to master the worst offenders after years as one of the wildest corners of the Internet.

At the same time, he has to convince people C is the must-have platform in social media, even if it is already reduced by Facebook

Facebook has more than 2.23 billion; users, while its WhatsApp, Instagram and Messenger apps each account for more than one billion

. reiterated its efforts to "invest in improving the health of public conversation" on its platform, making the "long-term health" of its service a priority over short-term parameters such as the number of users.

Twitter said that in May, its systems identified and contested over 9 million potentially spam or automated accounts per week, up from 6.4 million in December 2017. The company has already disclosed these numbers.

A Washington Post report put the total number of accounts suspended in May and June at 70 million. The Associated Press also found that Twitter had suspended 56 million accounts of this type in the last quarter of 2017. While Twitter maintains that most of these accounts were inactive and therefore unrecorded in monthly figures, the company has also warned that "We want people to feel free to express themselves freely and have launched new tools to solve problematic behaviors that distort and divert public conversation," said CEO Jack Dorsey in a statement. 19659003] Twitter's market value dropped by more than $ 6 billion on Friday, to about $ 26 billion. Investors are still enjoying Facebook at $ 503 billion. Facebook lost $ 119 billion in value Thursday.

Twitter's second-quarter net profit was $ 100.1 million, after a loss last year over the same period. It's the third consecutive profit of the company, the third it's ever posted.

According to the Zacks Investment survey, the net income of the San Francisco business was 13 cents or 17 cents adjusted per share. Research

Revenue of $ 710.5 million, up 24% and exceeding expectations of $ 696 million

_____

Elements of this story were generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com/ap) using data from Zacks Investment Research. Access a ZACK stock report on TWTR at https://www.zacks.com/ap/TWTR