Twitter Inc. share price up, to start tracking mobile applications installed by users

Twitter Inc. announced it will start collecting lists of applications, which its users install on their mobile devices. The step of the social media company comes as part of a strategy to better target users by customizing advertising and content.

The company said in a post on its website: “To help build a more personal Twitter experience for you, we are collecting and occasionally updating the list of apps installed on your mobile device so we can deliver tailored content that you might be interested in.”

A notice about Twitters decision also appeared in its iOS and Google Android applications. According to the U.S.-based companys statement, the new feature is to be called “app graph” and is expected to help the company offer more relevant suggestions and advertising to its customers.

The company has been recently put under pressure by its shareholders who expressed their concerns that Twitters user growth is slowing. The company announced that its monthly active users increased by 23% and reached 284 million over the third quarter of the fiscal year. However, the result is 24% lower than the growth reached during the prior period.

The new features are supposed to help the social media make its services more attractive to new users. In its website post, Twitter made sure it guaranteed that it will only track the applications installed on the data from within the software.

Twitter is not the only social media company that collects data about the applications its users install on their devices. One of its major competitors – Facebook Inc. – also tracks similar information from applications where its code is implemented on, and is known as a “software development kit”.

Twitter Inc. rose 3.45% on Wednesday in New York to close at $41.13 per share, marking a one-year change of +2.36%. The company is valued at $26.10 billion. The companys shares stood at €32.837 in Frankfurt at 8:37 GMT. According to CNN Money, the 31 analysts offering 12-month price forecasts for Twitter Inc. have a median target of $54.00, with a high estimate of $64.00 and a low estimate of $39.00. The median estimate represents a +31.29% increase from the last price of $41.13.