The Twitter share price has jumped after the company reported a real profit for the first time — a major landmark for Twitter founder and chief executive Jack Dorsey and well above Wall Street expectations.

Now almost 12 years old and four years since it went public, Twitter made $91m during the fourth quarter of 2017, whereas it lost $167m this time in 2016.

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However, Twitter struggled with the closely watched social media growth metric: total monthly user base. Twitter monthly users averaged 330m monthly active users in the fourth quarter unchanged from the previous quarter.

That said, Twitter does have more money coming in. Revenue started growing again, rising to $732m in the fourth quarter, up two percent from $717m this time in 2016.

Wall Street has sent the Twitter share price higher at the open in New York, up around 25 percent shortly after the opening bell.

Dorsey said:

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Q4 was a strong finish to the year, We returned to revenue growth, achieved our goal of GAAP profitability, increased our shipping cadence, and reached five consecutive quarters of double digit DAU [daily active user] growth. I’m proud of the steady progress we made in 2017, and confident in our path ahead.

Twitter share price
Source: Google Finance

Twitter timeline — Dorsey’s long road to profitability
March 2006 — Twitter founded
July 2006 — Twitter launched
Q1 2007 — 400,000 tweets posted per quarter
Q1 2008 — 100m tweets posted per quarter
February 2010 — Twitter users post 50m tweets per day
June 2009 — Twitter servers crashed after Michael Jackson dies
2010 FIFA World Cup — fans wrote 2,940 tweets per second
April 2010 — Twitter acquires application developer Atebits, which becomes the iOS app
March 2012 — Twitter celebrates its sixth birthday and 140m users and 340m tweets per day
April 2012 — Twitter opens an office in Detroit to work with car makers
October 2012 — Twitter acquires video clip company Vine
January 2013 — Vine is launched
December 2012 — Twitter surpasses 200m monthly active users
January 2013 — Twitter acquires Crashlytics
 November 2013 — Twitter floats shares on the New York Stock Exchange
July 2014 — Twitter buys CardSpring
 July 2014 — Twitter buys Mitr
October 2014 — Twitter partners with IBM
February 2015 — Twitter acquires Niche
 March 2015 — Twitter acquires Periscope
April 2015 — Twitter acquires TellApart
June 2016 — Twitter acquires Magic Pony
September 2016 — Twitter shares spike on takeover rumours
 September 2017 — Twitter tests 280-character limit tweets
February 2018 — Twitter posts a profit for the first time