For months Twitter. the micro-blogging service, has received the kind of free attention of which mos...

For months Twitter. the micro-blogging service, has received the kind of free attention of which most companies can only dream. Politicians, corporate bosses, activists and citizens l the plat-form to calch every tweet of America's new president, who has become the service's 2 . "The whole world is watching Twitter," 3 Jack Dorsey, the company's chief executive, 4 he presented its results on February 9th. He has litde else to brag about.
But Donald Trump has not provided the kind of boost the 5 firm really needs. It reported 6 revenue growth and a loss of $ 167m. User growth has been sluggish, too: it added just 2m users in that period. Facebook added 72m. The day of the results, shares in Twitter dropped by 12qo. 7 news oudeLs around the world already report 8 Mr Trump's most sensationaJ tweets, many do not feel compelled to join the platform t0 9 them. OLhers are 1O by mobs of trolls and large amounts of misinformation.
And not 11 Mr Trvmp could change the cold, hard truth about Twitter: that it can never be Facebook. True, it has become one of the most important 12 for public and political 13 among its 319m monthly users. It played an important role in the Arab spring and 14 such as Black Lives MaUer. BuL the platform's freewheeling nature makes it hard to spin gold from. 15 , really trying to do so-by packing Twitter feeds 16 advertising, say-would drive away users.
Twitter's latest results are likely to encourage those who think it should never have become a 17 listed company, and want it to consider alternate models of ownership, such as a co-operative. They 18 Twitter as a kind of public utility-a "people's platform" -the management of which should concem public 19 rather more than commercial ones. If the company were coop-eratively owned by users, it would be 20 from short-term pressure to please its investors and meet earrungs targets.