Twitter Revenue and Usage Statistics (2021)

Mansoor Iqbal

Updated: November 12, 2021

Twitter is a real-time microblogging platform, publicly launched in July 2006. At launch, its defining features were the tight limits placed on each post, known at a tweet. Originally, users could only use 140 characters, although that was doubled to 280 in 2017.

Formed by former Odeo employees Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Evan Williams and Biz Stone, the site originally used SMS to send tweets onto the network. It received its first boost of users at SXSW 2007, when the founders showed all the tweets hitting the network in real-time.

From there, Twitter grew out its userbase to reach over 300 million monthly active users. It added new features, but for the most part has retained the same look and feel of early Twitter, much to the chagrin of shareholders who have wanted Twitter to be more competitive with Facebook.

Twitter has branched out into other areas of innovation, such as short-video with Vine or live-video with Periscope, but both were cancelled by Twitter. Some have argued that Twitter mismanaged both projects, as Vine came well before Music.ly and TikTok, but was unable to capture the market which was clearly there.

This may be partly due to the management of Twitter, which has had Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, Dick Costolo and then Jack Dorsey again as CEO. Dorsey is also CEO at Square, which has led to complaints from shareholders and even a lawsuit.

Twitter is experimenting with new formats for tweets, such as donations and currency for tweets. It recently launched Twitter Spaces, a clone of Clubhouse’s live-audio platform, although Twitter has a poor track record for supporting anything outside the base platform.

Looking for Twitter data?

Our premium report provides Twitter insights, data and statistics on revenues, financials, users and demographics.

Download Report

That said, Twitter may be in new form after four years of user stagnation. It has added mDAUs at a faster rate this year than the past three and noticed higher year-on-year growth, although this may be partly due to the pandemic.

We have collected data and statistics on Twitter. Read on below to find out more.

Twitter key statistics

Twitter generated $3.7 billion revenue in 2020, an 8.8 percent increase year-on-year
86 percent of Twitter’s revenue came from advertising in 2020
Twitter posted a net loss of $1.1 billion in 2020, which was the company’s first annual loss since 2017
Twitter has 186 million daily active users and 38 million users in the United States

Twitter overview

Launch date	21 March 2006
HQ	San Francisco, California
People	Jack Dorsey (CEO, co-founder), Parag Agrawal (CTO), Evan Williams (ex-CEO, co-founder)
Business type	Public (NYSE: TWTR)
Industry	Social networking

Twitter revenue

Twitter annual revenue

Year	Revenue
2012	$0.3 billion
2013	$0.6 billion
2014	$1.4 billion
2015	$2.2 billion
2016	$2.5 billion
2017	$2.4 billion
2018	$3 billion
2019	$3.4 billion
2020	$3.7 billion

Twitter revenue by segment

Year	Advertising	Data licensing & Other
2015	$1.9 billion	$0.2 billion
2016	$2.2 billion	$0.2 billion
2017	$2.1 billion	$0.3 billion
2018	$2.6 billion	$0.4 billion
2019	$2.9 billion	$0.4 billion
2020	$3.2 billion	$0.5 billion

Source: Twitter

Twitter revenue by region

Year	United States	Rest of World
2018	$1.6 billion	$1.4 billion
2019	$1.9 billion	$1.5 billion
2020	$2 billion	$1.6 billion

Source: Twitter

Twitter profit

Year	Profit
2012	($79 million)
2013	($645 million)
2014	($577 million)
2015	($521 million)
2016	($456 million)
2017	($108 million)
2018	$1.2 billion
2019	$1.4 billion
2020	($1.1 billion)

Note: Parentheses equals loss

Source: Twitter

Twitter users

Twitter annual users

Year	Users
2017	110 million
2018	112 million
2019	139 million
2020	186 million

Note: Twitter tracks average monetizable daily active users (mDAU), which only includes DAUs it can advertise to. Twitter’s MAUs are reportedly at between 350 and 400 million

Twitter users by region

Year	United States	Rest of World
2017	25 million	85 million
2018	26 million	96 million
2019	29 million	110 million
2020	36 million	150 million

Source: Twitter

Twitter demographics

Age	Male	Female	Total
13-17	6.5%	2.6%	9.1%
18-24	13.6%	8%	21.6%
25-34	21.4%	7.5%	28.9%
35-49	20.7%	7.5%	28.2%
55+	8.2%	4.1%	12.3%
Overall	70.4%	29.7%

Source: Hootsuite and We Are Social

Most followed Twitter accounts

Account	Followers
#1	@barackobama
#2	@justinbieber
#3	@katyperry
#4	@rihanna
#5	@Cristiano
#6	@taylorswift13
#7	@ladygaga
#8	@AriannaGrande
#9	@TheEllenShow
#10	@YouTube

Note: As of March 2021

Source: Twitter

Twitter vs competitors: users

Want to learn more about social apps? Check out our Social App Report

Twitter FAQ

How many Americans use Twitter as a data source?

12 percent of Americans use it as a data source, according to Pew Research Center

How many brands use Twitter for marketing?

66 percent of brands with over 100 employees use Twitter for marketing purposes (eMarketer)

How much Twitter usage is mobile?

80% of Twitter usage happens on mobile devices (Google)

How many Twitter users in India?

There are 55 million Twitter users in India, according to App Annie

How much do the top 10% of Twitter users contribute?

In the US, top 10 percent of tweeters contribute 92 percent of tweets in 2020, up from 80 percent in 2018 (Pew Research Center)

More Social App Data

Tweet1

Share23