Selerity reported Twitter's Q1 2015 quarterly earnings results On April 28, 2015.
#BREAKING: Twitter $TWTR Q1 Revenue misses estimates, $436M vs. $456.52M expected
— Selerity (@Selerity) April 28, 2015
Besides the news itself (Twitter's revenues were disappointing to some investors) the event was noteworthy because it occurred at 3:07 pm New York time—almost an hour before the close of trading. While it’s rare for companies to release during market-hours there is no official policy prohibiting it and early announcements do happen occasionally. In the case of Twitter’s earnings, it was apparently the result of an accident by NASDAQ's investor relations subsidiary, Shareholder.com.
Most of the media coverage to date has focused on the process by which Selerity obtained the earnings press release so quickly. Some of that coverage has been speculative or inaccurate. In particular it’s important to understand that this was not a “hack." That term implies a circumvention of laws or privacy, something Selerity would never do. Nor was it a “leak” by Selerity—it had already been published in the expected manner in the expected location. It was just early. We did not “guess” the URL that contained Twitter’s quarterly earnings results. Anyone with a web-browser and an Internet connection could have followed the links from the main investor relations page to the same PDF file that Selerity found.
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