US YoY numbers are down--this is true. Q4 has historically been a bad growth month for them.<p>If you&#x27;re focused on MAUs, then Q4 in a non-election year is going to be bad. It&#x27;s like &quot;peak boring Twitter&quot;. Everyone is rocking Amazon and the online retailers. There are no new TV series or movies dropping. Bowl season hasn&#x27;t started.  World Cup 2014 (Men) and 2015 (Women) are past.<p>Granted, the US annual YoY numbers aren&#x27;t good, but:<p>* International is up 11%.<p>* 2016 is an election year.<p>* And there are Olympics this year.<p>* And Q1 is historically the strongest growth month.<p>I kind of think that if you&#x27;re strictly MAU-focused, it&#x27;s not a bad time to get in.<p>That said:<p>* I have noticed casual users dropping off their interaction volume based on my puny timeline.<p>* I attribute some of that not to anything competitive, but to the economy picking up and everyone being so freaking busy.  More lurking, less of a need to self-validate. Call it social proof fatigue. (I really suspect this is the canary in the coal mine for Facebook engagement.)<p>* The sharp divide between folks who claim to &quot;get&quot; Twitter and those who claim to &quot;don&#x27;t get&quot; Twitter is sharpening. Rather than seeing this as a negative, I see this as a bifurcation that can be studied and exploited.<p>Twitter still has a unique and important niche. There are so many ways they can innovate around this niche without destroying it.<p>My take:<p>* Twitter <i>search</i> is an unexploited global resource.<p>* Buffing up search and offering it <i>orthogonally</i> to the Twitter user experience is a HUGE potential upside that is untapped. They can monetize the hell out of that and not screw up the experience! Why limit engagement with their data flow to the timeline! I&#x27;d <i>gladly</i> accept more ads in a search than in my timeline.<p>* Restating that: content creators--the people who tweet--low barrier to entry. Market search and Moments in a broader way. The pulse of the country. You can laden that with the ads. Those are the MAUs you want.<p>They&#x27;ll be fine. This feels more like a narrative created by competitors or potential acquirers to get them on the cheap before they can execute on their core value. Maybe they&#x27;re run by weak-willed dullards who will cave because they can&#x27;t see it, and it will be Google or someone else with a lick of sense that leads them to their promise, or who acquires them to kill them off.