Twitter's 3Q report illustrates challenges facing new CEO

Twitter's losses are mounting as the messaging service struggles to expand its audience under recently hired CEO Jack Dorsey. The challenges facing Dorsey came into sharper focus in a third-quarter report released. The numbers covered the three months ending in September, a stretch when Dorsey was serving as interim CEO before Twitter hired him on a permanent basis.

Twitter ended the period with a core audience of 307 million active users, an increase of just 3 million from June. That wasn't much better than a gain of 2 million users in the previous quarter, a letdown that led to the departure of Twitter's previous CEO, Dick Costolo. Revenue climbed 58 percent from last year to USD 569 million.

Twitter still lost USD 132 million, extending the company's uninterrupted history of losses since Dorsey co-founded the service nearly a decade ago. The San Francisco company has now accumulated losses of about USD 2 billion. The evidence of Twitter's ongoing malaise reversed a recent rally in Twitter's stock, which came as investors grew optimistic that things would rapidly improve under Dorsey's leadership.

Twitter's stock plunged USD 4.07, or 13 percent, to USD 27.27 in extended trading after the report came out. Although it remains among the Internet's most popular and influential means of communications, Twitter has seen its user growth slow down since its initial public offering of stock two years ago. Facebook and other rival services have been faring far better over that time.