Twitter topped Wall Street estimates for the third quarter of 2017, and gained 4 million monthly active users worldwide for the period -- after revealing that it has misstated user counts since the fourth quarter of 2014.

The company again faced financial headwinds, with quarterly revenue of $590 million declining 4% year-over-year, its third straight quarter of declines.

Twitter reported a net loss of $21 million and adjusted earnings per share of 10 cents. Still, it beat analyst expectations and Twitter shares were up more than 10% in premarket trading Thursday.

For Q3, Twitter had an average monthly active user base of 330 million for the quarter, up 4% year-over-year and an increase of 4 million from the prior quarter. But that was after the company restated MAUs slightly because it incorrectly included users of third-party apps -- for example, it reduced the monthly users count by 2 million for Q2 2017.

"We discovered that since the fourth quarter of 2014 we had included users of certain third-party applications as Twitter MAUs that should not have been considered MAUs," Twitter said in a regulatory filing Thursday. Users of those third-party applications were able to send authenticated messages via SMS through Twitter's systems, but that didn't relate to activity on the Twitter platform, according to the company's explanation.

Twitter again touted double-digit growth in average daily active users, but it doesn't report the actual number of DAUs. Daily actives grew 14% year-over-year, compared with increases of 12%, 14% and 11% over the preceding three quarters on an annual basis.

On a call with investors, CEO Jack Dorsey reiterated that Twitter is intently focused on improving safety for users. "It's our job to help people stay informed about what's happening in the world and what people are talking about, and we're focused on making our service faster, easier to use, and more relevant to more people every day," he said in prepared remarks.