April 29--Shares of Twitter Inc. continued to plunge Wednesday morning after weak revenue figures were prematurely leaked a day earlier.
The social media giant's stock fell $2.24, or 5.3%, to $40.03 a share in morning trading. The drop follows an 18.2% tumble the day before.
On Tuesday, Twitter reported that first-quarter revenue fell far short of analyst expectations, even though it jumped to $435.9 million from $250.5 million.
The financial results were scheduled to be reported after the market closed, but they surfaced early, in a series of tweets, from a data-scraping firm that searches the Web for unreported financial news it can provide to clients.
About 20 minutes after the first tweet, the New York Stock Exchange halted trading in Twitter shares, before reopening the firm's stock for the final 13 minutes of the trading day.
Twitter was able to report earnings before the market closed.
Behind the weak first quarter were disappointing results in advertising revenue, in large part because Twitter's user growth is slowing.
MORE ON TWITTER
Twitter faces Google buyout rumors once again
Leak of revenue figures adds to Twitter's bad day; shares fall 18%
