Few things stand out for me from the above chart:

1. Despite its very large user base, Meta is miles ahead of competition in monetizing its user base. Its ARPU is almost 2x that of Twitter and 3x that of Snapchat.
2. Twitter’s ARPU growth has stagnated over the last 3.5 years and has started to decline in recent quarters. The turmoil over at Twitter post Musk’s takeover will not make this any easier.
3. Snapchat and Pinterest has a lot of catching up to do. Their ARPU is growing way too slowly for their liking.

Also, if you like this, you can find more charts / data stories like this in my newsletter.

Tools use: Google slides and Vizzlo

Data from company reports

I'm frequently surprised at how influential Twitter is despite a relatively small user base. You rarely hear anything about Pinterest in the news despite having close to double the user base.

Maybe the world would be better off if politicians and pundits had to express themselves through Pinterest boards instead of tweets :P

Haha...True.

Pinterest should earn more for their users as it lends itself so well to shopping.

Really needs to do something about it.

That's because Twitter is specifically being sought out by those people. The "shout into the void" style really seems to work for politicians and journalists.

[removed]

I find it interesting how it dipped through 2020. I thought they would've earned more since basically everyone was online at the time.

That's a great point -- 75% of what you see are products. Surprised they're not monitizing it better.

Probably more “casual” users at that time, spending fewer dollars each.

Crazy how low Pinterest is when it’s people interested in things. Sellable objects. Just put the ad and link?

Unless I’m reading this chart wrong, then even if Twitter retains its current user base and ARPU, it will take over 12.5 years for it to have accumulated revenue in excess of its $44 billion purchase price.

With users and advertisers bailing on the platform in not insignificant numbers, that 12.5 years is only going to get a lot longer without some kind of positive changes.

Do we have financials for Reddit?

I think it's usage. Those on Twitter will spend an hour a day on it. Pinterest might be an hour a month

You're reading the chart correctly for revenue but misinterpreting that revenue is not net-income. Twitter loses an average of $500M a year after all that revenue+costs which only makes his 44B purchase all the more perplexing. He far overpaid for a historically money losing venture, and sure if he can start to make it profitable, which happened twice in twit-history for an at best $1.5B that year .. that's a long 30yr/break even

not a public company.

Ah yeah, fair enough. I forgot about totally unimportant things like overhead, operating costs, wages, taxes, etc. Though from the sounds of things, I’m not the only one who overlooked those…

come to think of it, how does whatsapp monetize its user base?

Just wait till you see YouTube

Awww that explains it :)

[removed]

That pinterest number is monthly users, compared to twitters daily users, its hard to say which one actually has a larger base.

Surprising to me that Twitter makes as much as it does.

And that Pinterest makes as little as it does, since every woman I know who uses it primarily makes lists of things to buy for some hypothetical ultimate room / apartment.

Like Pinterest is literally like playing make believe in a mall. How is that not more profitable? Maybe a bunch of super casual users who use it like Tumblr or something?

I would have thought Twitter and Pinterest would be flipped.

Meta is no doubt best at profiling users that is used to target ads, hence deemed to be more effective.

Yeah their ad targeting products were very effective + they also went way more aggressive in harvesting user data from outside the FB platforms. Their ARPU is really strong b/c of that.

I'm curious to see how monetization suffers (if at all) after the IDFA changes from Apple.

A lot of advertisers would have pulled their campaigns. You’re not going to advertise for businesses that are effectively closed (e.g. cinemas). The increase of user activity would actually manage this worse as you’d have increased supply of active users and lower demand.

Would love to see YouTube on this list

[deleted]

Revenue vs profit

This is why it's hilarious when people think they should get paid a lot of money for their data. Your own data is worth like $5/year max. You might be able to generate $10-15 worth of ad revenue but it also costs $5-10 of computing and overhead to get that revenue, so no company is gonna pay more than $5/year for your data

Agreed. In terms of free cash flow per user..it's pennies and cents to the company