Is it a coincidence that Twitter’s shares jumped by double-digit margins on the same day that it began enforcing a policy designed to clear out violent hate speech and hordes of angry trolls? Unfortunately, probably.
Shares in the social-media company jumped 10 per cent on Tuesday alone, CNBC noted, it’s because analysts at J.P. Morgan upgraded the company’s stock from hold to overweight. Analyst Doug Anmuth wrote that Twitter is now “one of our top” picks among companies with low to middle-range market caps for 2018.
If it holds, the surge puts Twitter on track for a 36 per cent rise in share value throughout all of 2017.
According to CNBC, Anmuth cited improvements in Twitter’s video and live-streaming capabilities – just avert your gaze from subsidiary Periscope’s horrifying death spiral! – and improved user growth. He also projected it would be able to increase revenue and may even achieve profitability next year.
That’s a high note to wrap up 2017 on for Twitter, which has seen disrepute over its rampant harassment problem and other issues like its involvement in the alleged Russian operation to swing the 2016 elections. At various points throughout the year, it’s had difficulty trying to add users and seen stumbles in share value. Twitter has also had a hard time competing with rivals like Facebook, which is less niche, allows users to easily connect with friends and family, and also harvests an absolutely unthinkable amount of monetizable data on its users.
Yet as TechCrunch noted, Twitter is now within “shooting distance” of rival Snap’s $US19.5 ($25) billion market cap … not a totally encouraging comparison, given Snap is imploding.