Twitter Inc. topped analysts’ projections for fourth-quarter revenue and added more new daily users than expected, citing product improvements and more personalized content on its social network.

Revenue rose 11 per cent to US$1.01 billion, slightly higher than the US$994.5 million predicted in a Bloomberg analyst survey. Twitter’s user growth was a bigger surprise. The company added seven million daily active users in the period, and now has 152 million people logging in daily on average, up 21 per cent from the same period a year earlier. Bloomberg Consensus estimates were for the company to finish 2019 with just 148.1 million total users.

In a statement Thursday, Twitter said that more than half of the 26 million daily users it added in 2019 were “directly driven by product improvements,” and its daily user base grew by “double-digit increases in all of our top 10 markets” in the fourth quarter. The company has made a public effort to improve user interactions on its service, and make it easier for users to find posts about topics they care about.

Twitter stock rose about three per cent in pre-market trading.

The fourth quarter numbers provide a stark contrast to Twitter’s third-quarter earnings report, in which the company missed its revenue projections, and the stock fell by more than 20 per cent. At the time, Twitter also lowered its fourth-quarter outlook, and Thursday’s revenue total was at the high end of that revised guidance, but still lower than what analysts had initially projected heading into the quarter.

Last quarter, Twitter blamed some of its business challenges on a “bug” that enabled the company to mistakenly target people with ads using personal data uploaded for security purposes. Removing that data from its targeting arsenal hurt the company in the third quarter, and was still a problem for Twitter in the fourth quarter, according to the company’s shareholder letter, which said that revenue growth was down “four or more points” as a result of the bug.

Still, Twitter beat estimates and said it plans to post US$825 million to US$885 million in revenue in the first quarter. Analysts on average are predicting sales of US$868.9 million.

Things are going well enough that Twitter said it plans to increase spending by 20 per cent in 2020, including a plan to increase headcount by 20 per cent and build a new data center. It was just three years ago that Twitter was headed in the opposite direction, cutting staff and selling off assets to other tech giants like Google in an effort to reach profitability.

The company posted net income of US$1.47 billion for 2019, its second straight year of profitability after nearly 12 years of losses. Profit excluding certain items in the fourth quarter was US$135 million, or 17 cents US a share, the San Francisco-based company said.

Questions remain as Twitter heads into a year featuring the Olympics and a U.S. presidential election. Twitter often cites major worldwide events as an advertising and user-growth opportunity, though the company has also said that it will not sell political ads ahead of the 2020 U.S. election. Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey has also announced plans to work for at least three months in Africa this year, a decision that promises to test Twitter’s corporate structure. Dorsey already has two jobs — he’s also CEO of Square Inc.

Twitter will hold an analyst call to discuss the earnings at 8 a.m. New York time Thursday.