via Therese Poletti, MarketWatch

Excerpt…

When Twitter Inc. reports earnings on Wednesday, revenue could be much larger than expected, based on the mobile ad growth trend that propelled Facebook Inc. and Google to earnings beats.

But even if Twitter does surprise with big mobile-ad sales, most investors in the beleaguered San Francisco-social media company won’t care.

Wall Street has been much more focused on Twitter’s user growth as the key barometer to its future, not revenue growth. For the last year or so, the company has been battling the notion that its user growth has peaked while continuing to put up year-over-year sales growth of more than 50%.

“If nothing else, it is the pulse of human society, it tends to break news before news breaks news,” said Brian Solis, an analyst with the Altimeter Group. “It is the heartbeat of real time.” He added that because the company now has to answer to shareholders as a public company, Twitter may lose sight of what it could mean to society at large.

If Twitter is not going to grow enough beyond its current size in terms of users, investors may pressure the company to find a suitor. Solis thinks that Twitter could be a good fit for Facebook or Alphabet. He added, though, that its second option — to remain independent — could work if Twitter rethinks the user experience and works more with the developer community to foster its ecosystem.

“It just takes Jack and a strong board to do something that Mark Zuckerberg does, to co-create a much more valuable ecosystem moving forward,” the Altimeter analyst said.

Twitter already has an ecosystem with growing value, in terms of revenue per user. But until its user growth kicks into high gear, Wall Street appears ready to log out of the social network for good.