It took them 12 years, but Twitter has finally registered a profit. While announcing its results for Q4 2017, the company said that it had earned a profit of $91.1 million. Revenue is up by 2% year-on-year at 731.6 million versus 686.4 million in the same quarter the previous year. Despite that, Twitter’s user base didn’t grow at all last quarter. The company still has 330 million monthly-active-users, up 4% compared to the same quarter a year ago, but no change from Q3 2017. The lower-than-projected monthly-active-user count was attributed by the company in part to stepped-up efforts to reduce spam, malicious activity and fake accounts. Twitter did report that its daily active user base grew by 12%, its fifth straight quarter of double-digit growth. But the caveat here is that Twitter doesn’t reveal how many users are active daily, so it’s difficult to put the growth numbers into perspective. The social media giant may not be too worried though. Profitability was one of the company’s main goals in 2017. To achieve this it laid off 9% of its workforce in late 2016, and then sold off its developer business and shut down its video app Vine. The company will invest in products this year that increase audience engagement, which will cause expenses to "more closely align with revenues," Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal said during a conference call. The shares soared as much as 30%, the most since Nov. 7, 2013, to $35. They were trading at $31.14 at 12:59 p.m.…
