Shares in Twitter have rocketed on reports of a rise in user numbers and increased efforts to tackle trolls.

According to a Sky News report, shares in the social media giant have surged on more robust user growth figures and significant progress in efforts to eradicate abusive posts and fake accounts.

Twitter surpassed market expectations with an 18% increase in revenue to $787m in the first quarter of this year, compared to the same time last year.

Following the quarterly update, Twitter shares increased 16%. In addition, the company stated advertising sales, which are 18% higher than last year, accounted for the majority of the hike in revenue, with a greater contribution stemming from video advertisements.

Analysts were focusing on user numbers as fears that the stagnant performance from Twitter in 2018 would continue.

The company said that its 'monetisable' daily active users - gauging users exposed to daily advertising - increased 12% to 134m during the quarter.

Twitter affirmed it remained profitable, with earnings increasing over 200% to 191m in the quarter, bolstered by a tax benefit, in spite of operating expenses reaching $693m.

Chief executive of Twitter, Jack Dorsey stated: "We are reducing the burden on victims and, where possible, taking action before abuse is reported.

"For example, we are now removing 2.5 times more Tweets that share personal information and 38% of abusive Tweets that are taken down every week are being proactively detected by machine learning models.

"We're also continuing our work to make Twitter more conversational via the launch of our public prototype app (twttr), with the end goal of making conversation on Twitter feel faster, more fluid, and more fun."

Over a year ago Twitter launched a campaign to tackle spam and abusive content, Yahoo News reports. The firm has reported that 38% of abusive content is now “surfaced proactively” to teams for review, rather than depending on user reports, up from 0% of abusive content discovered in 2018.

In its Q1 shareholder letter, Twitter reported: “We are taking an even more proactive approach to reducing abuse on Twitter and its effects in 2019.”