Twitter shares drop by 18% over slowing user growth

Twitter's shares have reportedly dropped by 18 percent, to 54.18 dollars, owing to a slowed user growth rate, the company revealed in its first-quarterly earnings report.

The microblogging site went public last November and despite never reporting profit; the company's shares rose sky high on the first day of trading.

However, the 140-character site now has 241 million monthly active users, up by 30 percent year-over-year, but that is only up by 4 percent from last quarter, Tech Crunch reports.

According to the report, Twitter users' engagement with the site, based on Timeline Views, also fell 7 percent to 148 billion.

Quarterly earnings for Twitter were up 116 percent from the fourth quarter a year ago, but it posted a net loss of 511.5 million dollars for the quarter, and a net loss for 2013 came in at 645.3 million dollars.

Questions about Twitter's ability to grow its user base and boost its ad revenue have been increasing since its IPO debut, with investors even calling the sudden surge in share prices soon after it went public as a tech-bubble.