• by Erik Sass , Staff Writer @eriksass1, February 12, 2016

Faced with dramatically slowing growth rates, Twitter is pouring resources into video-streaming service Periscope, according to co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey, who shared details of the strategy in a conference call discussing the social network’s financial results from last year.

Rattling off the leadership team’s priorities for 2016, Dorsey gave second place (after making the service more intuitive) to Periscope, promising, “we're going to invest in being a leader in live streaming video, building off our lead with Periscope.” He later added: “On the Periscope side, we are investing heavily in this technology and the team is working to build a full stack around video to continue to scale that.”

Dorsey also noted the video platform’s progress to date, including new capabilities through which “anyone could see a Periscope in a tweet and stream live from the tweet, so any broadcaster could open their phone, start broadcasting and anyone with Twitter who could visualize a tweet could actually see that broadcast live as well.”

Above all, Dorsey reaffirmed the company’s commitment to driving user engagement around events in real time: “Twitter is live, live commentary, live conversations, and live connections, whether it’s breaking news, entertainment, sports, or everyday topics, hearing about and watching a live event unfold is the fastest way to understand the power of Twitter.”

Despite this commitment, Twitter is also moving away from arranging tweets in chronological order, if users so choose; the social giant will now give users the option of seeing more relevant tweets placed more prominently in their timelines. 

On the advertising side, Twitter recently launched a new video ad unit called First View, which gives advertisers the top spot in the queue for Twitter’s ad network.

Overall, Twitter’s revenues increased 48% to $710 million in the fourth quarter, while the number of average monthly active users rose 9% to 320 million in the quarter, with 80% of these using mobile devices. The company also posted a $90 million loss.