Twitter’s first quarter revenues hit $US250m in its second earnings report since becoming a public company late last year, with advertising revenue accounting for 90% of the takings.

Advertising revenue contributed $226m to the revenue, with mobile advertising representing 80%. The number of monthly active mobile users hit 198 million, up 31%.

While ad spend has increased 125% year-on-year for the quarter overall user growth has slowed.

The number of people using the service grew by 25% to 255 million monthly active users, up from 241 million in the last previous quarter.

But the growth is down on the 30% increase Twitter saw in the previous quarter.

Shares in the service, which allows users to share short-messages of 140 characters or less, took a sharp plunge after the announcement was made.

Despite the 9.6% drop in Twitter’s shares to $38.53 in after-hours trading, chief executive Dick Costolo described the first quarter as “very strong”.

“Revenue growth accelerated on a year over year basis fuelled by increased engagement and user growth. We also continue to rapidly increase our reach and scale.”

 The number of times Twitter users refresh a Twitter feed, known as ‘timeline views’, increased by 15% in the quarter to hit 157bn. However, the figure is down on the 26% jump timeline views experienced in the final quarter of 2013.