Shares in San-Francisco based Twitter have fallen over 10 per cent after the group revealed its losses in the final three months of 2016 had almost doubled.

The social media giant's fourth quarter deficit of $167million (£133million) compared to one of just $90million the previous year.

Revenues and user numbers both fell short of analysts' expectations. Its revenues increased by 1 per cent over the period to $717million, which is around $23million less than analysts predicted.

Worth Tweeting about: Shares in San-Francisco based Twitter have fallen over 10 per cent

The group said it had 319million active users over the period, up from 317million the previous quarter.

Twitter said it expects advertising revenue growth to 'continue to lag' behind audience growth figures for the rest of the year.

Twitter's advertising revenues for the final quarter of 2016 came in at $638million, marking a year-on-year decline.

Jack Dorsey, Twitter's chief executive, said: 'We overcame the toughest challenge for any consumer service at scale by reversing declining audience trends and re-accelerating usage.'

He added: 'While revenue growth continues to lag audience growth, we are applying the same focused approach that drove audience growth to our revenue product portfolio, focusing on our strengths and the real-time nature of our service.

'This will take time, but we're moving fast to show results.'

The company said: 'Advertising revenue growth may be further impacted by escalating competition for digital ad spending and Twitter's re-evaluation of its revenue product feature portfolio, which could result in the de-emphasis of certain product features.'

Falling ad revenue: Twitter's advertising revenues for the final quarter of 2016 came in at $638million

Twitter expects its earnings for the first quarter of this year to reach between $75million and $95million, which is less than half of the final quarter earnings announced today.

The social media giant's shares are down 10.63 per cent to $16.73.

US-listed Twitter faces ever increasing competition from rival online giants including Snapchat and Facebook.

In October last year, Twitter said it planned to lay off 9 per cent of its workforce, as it tried to dust itself off from failed acquisition talks with potential buyers including Disney and Salesforce.