"But Twitter’s U.S. advertising revenue for the five weeks from April 1 to the first week of May was $88 million, down 59 percent from a year earlier, according to an internal presentation obtained by The New York Times. The company has regularly fallen short of its U.S. weekly sales projections, sometimes by as much as 30 percent, the document said."
Twitter has closed down 1 out of their 3 data centers (Sacramento), meaning data center costs are down by ~33%
ad revenue dropping by ~60% is... a win? There's probably a more accurate way to slice this but at first glance it looks ok to me.
I'm saying that down 60% looks good against the backdrop of the dramatic cost-cutting that they have done.
Sounds roughly like they expected a 30% drop (for the reasons you cited) and got a 60%-ish drop instead.
From my limited perspective given the factually reported cost reductions, -60% seems 'fine'. Right now it seems like the platform has hit rock bottom in terms of public sentiment so even if the projections were optimistic at -30%, as long as things don't get worse, that's about it. Everyone who is holding out to subscribe or who has left the platform, has probably left already.
Would love to see the source document to understand what frequency 'regularly' and 'sometimes' refer to, and to know when in the last months the projections missed so spectacularly - but that would be boring journalism.