That's true and not limited to paid apps either. Twitter spent over $700 million on research and development in 2016. They made a loss of over $450 million. To

That's true and not limited to paid apps either. Twitter spent over $700 million on research and development in 2016. They made a loss of over $450 million. To be fair, their R&D doesn't exclusively pay for an improved 140 character text box. It also goes towards staying attractive for advertisers and trying new ideas. But still, the gap between the rather modest progress that Twitter is making on any front and their enormous costs (not just on R&D) is striking.