Twitter Inc has been on shaky ground over the last two years, with a dramatic slow in user growth and a lack of investor confidence in some of the company’s leadership. Twitter CFO Anthony Noto spoke at a technology conference hosted by Morgan Stanley on Tuesday, where he praised the new features added to the site over the last year, but Noto also stated that the company could do better.

Twitter’s long term plans have focused on making the service easier for new users to adopt, which has been one area in which the microblogger has struggled. In the last few months, Twitter began testing out a new instant feed feature that would allow new users to have a tailored news feed from the start, eliminating the need to build one from scratch for people who do not really know who to follow yet, which the company has admitted is one of the site’s largest barriers to entry.

“While you were away,” another feature added to Twitter’s mobile app recently, addresses the problem of people missing out on interesting tweets that happened since the last time they visited the site.

“It’s all about teaching people why they should use Twitter”

Noto said that Twitter has seen a rise in the use of direct messages, which allow Twitter users to communicate privately, as well as a rise in the overall number of messages sent in chat thanks to the group chat features that were introduced in December. The site has also seen a significant increase in video media since the site launched its own native support for video recording and sharing within the Twitter app.

Twitter is interested in enticing non-users who view tweets, who make up one of the microblog’s largest audience segments. One way it wants to do this is by finding ways to display interesting tweets and media that would draw new people in. “It’s all about teaching people why they should use Twitter but in a very telegraphic way,” Noto said.

But while Twitter has been making strides in improving its platform for both new and old users, Noto says it can do more. According to Noto, Twitter has seen “mild improvement, but nowhere near what the opportunity is in front of us.”

Photographer: Jim Graham/Bloomberg