Well, I hate to be the one to say I told you so about Twitter (TWTR) … but, I told you so.

Back on Jan. 2, shortly after TWTR stock bounced out of its post-IPO lull, I warned that the hype surrounding Twitter had blinded the market to some stark realities. The biggest of those realities was the ridiculous valuation that not even phenomenal growth could justify anytime soon. A close-second worry to the valuation concern regarding Twitter (and perhaps more relevant to investors at the time), however, was the specific concern that there was absolutely no room whatsoever for any kind of shortcoming.

Four months later, in the shadow of a 38% pullback from TWTR, we unfortunately have our proof that (1) Twitter stock was indeed overvalued given the numbers on the table, and (2) there wasn’t a smidgen of room for disappointment.

As evidence to those ends, Twitter actually fared better than expected last quarter, in terms of the top and bottom line. And to be clear, it actually grew earnings and revenues in the previous quarter, also growing its user base. The prompt for the 12% post-earnings plunge from TWTR stock, however, was that user growth appears to be slowing.

It’s a problem because accelerating user growth was the one thing traders were using to justify an enormously lofty valuation.

The Rest of the Twitter Numbers

The good news: Revenue was up 119% on a year-over-year basis last quarter, reaching $250 million, and the loss of 23 cents per share (though the company broke even on a non-GAAP basis) was a little healthier than the anticipated loss.

The outlook for Q2 as well as all of 2014 was in line with forecasts as well; Twitter is looking for roughly $275 million in revenue for the current quarter, and between $1.2 billion and $1.25 billion in revenue for fiscal 2014. And, the number of active users — those who log into Twitter at least once per month — grew to the tune of 25% in the first calendar quarter of the year on a year-over-year basis, and was up 6% from the total number of active users Twitter was boasting at the end of 2013.

The bad news: The market expected … no, desperately needed user growth to roll in stronger than 25% (YOY) and 6% (QOQ). It was the red-hot user growth of yesteryear — and only the red-hot growth that apparently peaked at 30% two quarters ago — that was propping a wildly overvalued TWTR stock up.

Twitter followed up on those results, explaining how certain nuances of user engagement were actually encouraging. Specifically, the number of timeline views in Q1 was higher than it was in Q4, and was up 15% on a year-over-year basis.

Great, but that little detail glosses over the fact that the 15% improvement in timeline view for Q1 is actually weaker than the 26% increase in timeline views we saw in the final quarter of 2013. Never mind the fact that revenue per 1,000 timeline views fell from $1.49 in the fourth quarter to $1.44 in the first quarter of 2014.

Slowing user growth? Weakening per-view revenue?

Twitter can selectively massage the numbers all it wants … but it has a problem, and it might not be one that can be solved before TWTR stock stops bleeding.

Bottom Line for TWTR Stock

Even with the writing on the wall, I’m sure there will be plenty of fans and TWTR stock owners that will find a way to justify a stunningly high price/sales ratio of 36.1 and the lack of actual earnings for years to come. That’s fine.

Just bear in mind that the exact same hype was at one point surrounding a company called Groupon (GRPN) … and Zynga (ZNGA) … and plenty of other names that flew high on their premise, but crashed and burned once investors realized the bills can’t be paid with premises.

Twitter is an interesting company, and like Groupon and Zynga have something of a marketable product, there is a market for a 140-character microblogging platform.

It’s not a market that justifies Twitter being a $21.5 billion enterprise, however.

The reality is, Twitter is a concept with inherent challenges. It’s not a terrible concept, but an ultimately flawed one. It’s called a social networking platform, but unlike Facebook (FB), there’s not a lot of networking … or even interaction. Messages are delivered in one direction, and though followers can retweet a Twitter post or respond with a new Twitter post of their own, there’s no comment/response thread to draw people in.

So, it’s not very “social,” and even if it was, there’s only so much pot-stirring you can do in 140 characters or less.

Translation: It’s just not all that interesting for very long.

Sadly (and this isn’t to say Facebook doesn’t face a similar hurdle), the only people who really care about a particular tweet is the person who wrote that tweet, and even posting and reading your own tweets gets old after a while. (And no, the company’s five-pronged plan can’t work around this one major flaw.)

Oh, the occasional celebrity tweet or amazingly relevant ad might spur some revenue-bearing engagement. By and large though, not many people care if you’re having a cookie, or are watching a game, or found a handbag on sale. And given the waning per-view revenue in addition to the slowing user growth, the fourth quarter of last year looks like it sparked the onset of Twitter fatigue.

The TWTR stock struggle is going to get tougher before it gets easier.

As of this writing, James Brumley did not hold a position in any of the aforementioned securities.