Twitter to prioritise fixing platform over user growth, shares plunge

Twitter Inc (TWTR.N) on Friday reported fewer monthly active users than analysts expected and warned that the closely-watched figure could keep falling as it deletes phony accounts, sending shares sharply lower in early trading.

The company said the work it was doing to clean up Twitter by purging automated and spam accounts had some impact on its user metrics in the second quarter, and that it would prioritize work to improve suspicious accounts and reduce hate speech and other abusive content over projects that could attract more users.