Twitter優異業績緣何驚倒華爾街

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

週二的財報已經證明，Twitter並不像人們想象的那樣四面楚歌。

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.

它剛發佈的第二季度財報表現極爲搶眼，讓華爾街的唱衰者大吃一驚。Twitter第二季度的收入達到3.12億美元，比去年同期翻了一倍還多。與此同時，Twitter的活躍用戶增勢喜人，用戶數同比增加了24%，達到2.71億人次。這使得Twitter的股價在週三上漲20%，收盤於46.3美元。

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.

考慮到在過去三個季度中，這家社交網絡的盈利情況令人失望，華爾街預計Twitter將會遭遇重挫，但這次Twitter輕鬆地讓他們大跌眼鏡。

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.

貝雅公司（Robert W. Baird & Co.）的分析師科林o塞巴斯蒂安認爲，Twitter近幾個月的成功主要應歸功於一些全球事件，像冬奧會和世界盃，這些活動凸顯了Twitter作爲即時信息源的價值。他指出，用戶在Twitter上每天要發出5億條推文，足以體現出這項服務在全球的重要性。

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

塞巴斯蒂安解釋道：“Twitter還在不斷改進應用，增強它們的功能，比如加入照片和視頻等富媒體。”

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.

巴克萊資本（Barclays Capital）的分析師保羅o沃格爾表示，Twitter用戶羣的增長也增加了其廣告點擊率——確切地說，是每年增加250%以上。沃格爾預計，爲了保持這一勢頭，Twitter很快就會把重心更多地傾向視頻工具，這樣美國橄欖球聯盟（National Football League）等營銷商就能像在其他網站一樣，利用這一服務創建和發佈短片。

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.”

Twitter在這方面已經取得了一定進步。去年，Twitter推出了視頻廣告產品Amplify，可以讓各品牌和電視網絡在Twitter上分享現場直播或預先錄製好的視頻。英國廣播公司美國頻道（BBC America）、福克斯（FOX）和天氣頻道（Weather Channel）成爲了他們的第一批合作伙伴。迄今爲止，Amplify主要在體育賽事和頒獎典禮上爲Twitter用戶所使用。在2013年的美國網球公開賽上，喜力（Heineken）利用Amplify發佈了124條帶視頻的推文，被近1,200萬用戶觀看。這次活動取得了相當的成功，因此喜力決定在今年即將到來的網球公開賽上繼續使用這一產品。在本週三的財報會議上，Twitter首席執行官迪克o科斯特羅強調了Amplify具有“與電視和其他內容創造者合作，幫助他們增加受衆”的價值。

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.

在Twitter改善綜合體驗的過程中，這類產品將起到關鍵作用，決定其第二季度的收益能否開啓一波盈利高潮。儘管Twitter的收入和用戶增長量令人吃驚，但他們仍然虧損了1.45億美元，其部分原因是股權補償——這是去年同期4,200萬美元虧損的三倍多。