为什么推特不公布日活跃用户数？

美国证券交易委员会对推特公司提出了一个许多投资者也好奇的问题：为什么不公布日活跃用户数？

推特会公布月活跃用户数，这个数字已经两个季度维持在3.28亿了。公司希望投资者转而关注日活跃用户数的增长，在过去三个季度里，这项数据每个季度都有10%以上的涨幅。但是推特并没有指明这个百分比的基数是多少。

在5月10日的信件中，证券交易委员会请推特解释这种做法，并“告诉我们百分比变动的信息如何让投资者清楚地了解你们平台的用户参与度”。

推特给出了很长的答复，称公布增长率比公布数值更加重要。公司表示，实际上，公布日活跃用户数会引发与Facebook数据的对比，而这是不公平的，因为Facebook的数据中包含了其独立的信息应用的用户数。这家位于旧金山的公司表示：“投资者就不会关注我们公司的表现与其他公司的区别了。”Facebook的月活跃用户数是推特的六倍。

推特也不希望投资者轻易通过计算得出其日活跃用户数。公司曾透露过日活跃用户在月活跃用户中的比例，不过这个比例仅适用于公司排名前20的市场。他们对证券交易委员会表示，自己不想披露整体比例，因为这“相当于间接告知了日活跃用户数的绝对数值，”从而让投资者的关注点从增长率上转移开来。推特称，后者更加重要。

推特在上周的收入电话会议上也受到了关于数据的质疑。在报告之后，公司做了一个说明，透露了两点数据的线索：日活跃用户数不足月活跃用户数的50%，但是其增长空间很大。

7月3日，证券交易委员会对推特表示他们对回答已经满意。不过一些分析师还不罢休。

Monness Crespi Hardt & Co.的分析师詹姆斯·卡克马克表示：“声称用户增长率比绝对数值重要，他们很有勇气，尤其考虑到后者才是（推特商业模式）的主要推动力量。”他估计推特的日活跃用户数大概是8,000万到1亿。而Facebook是13.2亿，Snapchat是1.66亿。（财富中文网）

译者：严匡正

The Securities and Exchange Commission has asked Twitter Inc. a question that many investors also have: why not disclose your number of daily active users?

Twitter reports the number of monthly active users, which stood at 328 million for two quarters. The company tells investors to focus instead on the percentage growth of people who use it daily, which has increased more than 10 percent in each of the last three quarters. But Twitter doesn’t say what that percentage represents.

In a May 10 letter, the SEC asked for Twitter to explain that choice, and “tell us how the percentage change information provides an investor with a clear understanding of user engagement on your platform.”

In the company’s lengthy response, it argued that showing growth was more important than showing the number. In fact, Twitter said, showing the number of DAUs would invite unfair comparison to Facebook, which calculates its number including people who use its separate Facebook messaging application. “Investors would not be able to compare performance between the Company and this other company,” San Francisco-based Twitter wrote. Facebook has six times the number of monthly users as Twitter.

Twitter doesn’t want it to be easy for investors to calculate its daily user number. The company used to say what proportion of monthly users also visited daily, but the number only applied to its top 20 markets. It told the SEC that it didn’t want to disclose a ratio because it “would indirectly disclose the absolute number of DAU,” shifting focus away from the growth percentage, which Twitter says is more important.

Twitter faced questions about the number on its earnings call last week, too. It put out a clarification statement after the report, giving two clues about the number: that daily users make up less than 50 percent of monthly users, and that there’s a lot of room for growth.

On July 3, the SEC told Twitter it was satisfied with their answers. But some analysts aren’t.

“It takes guts to make the claim that the percentage change is more important than the absolute number of daily users, especially considering that’s the primary driver” of Twitter’s business model, said James Cakmak, an analyst at Monness Crespi Hardt & Co. He estimates that Twitter’s DAUs are from 80 million to 100 million, compared with Facebook’s 1.32 billion and Snap’s 166 million.