Shares of social networking giant Twitter have slumped after the company posted a $143 million loss in the the first quarter.

Despite the profit loss, revenues for the company rose sharply, The company said revenues grew, and the popular messaging platform boosted its user base to 255 million.

“We had a very strong first quarter. Revenue growth accelerated on a year over year basis fuelled by increased engagement and user growth,” chief executive Dick Costolo said on Tuesday.

“We also continue to rapidly increase our reach and scale.”

Costolo said that with the integration of the mobile advertising startup MoPub, “we now reach more than one billion iOS and Android users each month, making us one of the largest in-app mobile ad exchanges in the world and the only one at scale to offer native in-app advertising”.

Twitter made a splash last year on Wall Street with a surge on its market debut, but its shares have struggled since then amid doubts on its pace of growth and progress toward profitability.

Using a popular Wall Street measure excluding special items, Twitter essentially broke even on a per-share basis, according to its quarterly report.

But investors were unimpressed, and Twitter’s shares sank more than eight per cent in after-hours electronic trades to $US39.12.

Twitter said the number of monthly active users was up 25 per cent from a year ago at 255 million, and 198 million were on mobile devices.

Advertising revenue hit $US226 million, an increase of 125 per cent over the past year, with mobile accounting for roughly 80 per cent of the total.