The market today is dominated by millennials. They have short attention spans. If there’s an industry report out there, it would highlight changing consumer patterns that in a big way justified the rise of social media networks such as Twitter. 140 characters, no nonsense. Makes perfect sense.
Ideally, if these reports did make sense, and Twitter appealed to the current demographic profile online, it should’ve been a runaway success. But reality is very different. Facebook seems to rule the social media world. Even Instagram, despite being late entrant with a focus on visual expression is more successful than Twitter.  So what is it, that didn’t work with Twitter?
Twitter and Facebook on the stock market are poles apart. Image: Google Finance
Twitter and Facebook on the stock market are poles apart. Image: Google Finance
Reports could be bollocks
That’s a quick way to analyse the developments. Research folks come up with reports that present a case for a immense business potential and opportunity. Twitter began at a time when consumers still used the text messaging service on mobile devices. Data consumption blew to proportions beyond expectations. Till the day we could very comfortably say that SMS is dead. Services such as WhatsApp and other OTT services clearly have surpassed SMS in terms of use. The primary reason is telcos continued to charge on SMS per message. In the age of the Internet, there’s no real reason to use it, unless you’re one of those weight-loss businesses who needs to spam 200 users daily. But then, you’d probably exploit the FUP on SMS anyway.
Twitter-Costolo_AP
Ex Twitter CEO Dick Costolo
Failure top down
I remember BlackBerry and Nokia. Both were company with a vast fan following. And there’s no doubt, their current situation is all thanks to failure on part of the respective leadership. This seems to be the case with Twitter. And the cracks seem to have developed a couple of years ago. First, the then CEO Dick Costolo resigned. Soon after there were a couple of reports when Twitter ended up laying off employees in tranches. Since investor sentiment is critical, most of these developments are hushed. Today, the VP of APAC at Twitter, Rishi Jaitly, said he was moving on to newer opportunities.
A huge list comprising alumni from the likes of Google were employees at Twitter. They certainly don’t come cheap. They probably are very capable bright minds and skilled in their respective fields. Yet, the exodus of people at Twitter continues. Either they’re asked to go, or they’d simply start looking out for new opportunity. Like Jaitly, they may sugar coat it with ‘new opportunity, same mission.’
It’s natural. It’s happened at BlackBerry, Yahoo, Nokia, and almost every company that has eventually sold off or wound up.
Image Credits: Reuters
Image Credits: Reuters
The struggle to stay relevant
I can’t help but reiterate how instead of thriving, Twitter is fighting a battle to stay relevant. On Twitter, the vocal crowd is now indifferent to the medium itself. There used to be a time when social media debates got vocal. Those in favour of Twitter would look down at those who preferred Facebook. Both are indifferent now. It’s kind of clear. Numbers matter right?
Facebook rules the game when it comes to number. Be it earnings from advertising, or sheer users, Facebook has an edge at any given point in time. The newer innovations at Twitter were supposed to be live video via Periscope, or short looping video which came in the form of Vine. After flirting for a long while, Twitter has dumped Vine. And is curious with Periscope. While Facebook seems to have nailed it with Live.
periscope-producer
That’s video. In addition, when it comes to advertising, brands can’t do much with Twitter beyond sponsored trends, sponsored tweets and may be a few cards here and there. Consumers may not necessarily care about any of these, but brands also increasingly plan Twitter into their larger campaigns to have a balance and generate short time buzz. When it comes to consistent driving of sales online, it’s back to the old rules. Anything but Twitter. The next time you browse through Amazon or Flipkart in search of that pair of Nike shoes, you’re more likely to see a follow up ad on Facebook rather than Twitter. And it’s not an isolated preference.
What’s unique about Twitter from a marketers point of view is trends. The only thing brands and advertisers, or communication strategists ever cared about Twitter was Trends. Depending on whether a particular campaign trended in Mumbai, India, or the World, brand executives get a louder pat on their back. No one ever expected a surge in sales via Twitter. Unfortunately, for Twitter, that makes its criticality in the advertisers options just nosedive.
Twitter HQ. Image: Twitter
Twitter HQ. Image: Twitter
Twitterati took more than they gave
Twitterati on the other hand, are busy fighting with each other. Right vs left. Democrat vs Republican. Unlike Facebook, again, where we’re busy watching cat and dog videos. Sigh, my Twitter bio says that I love dog videos. But I end up sharing more of those on Facebook rather than Twitter! That explains quite a bit.
Twitter has created quite a few personalities, just like YouTube or Facebook. Similarly, Vine also has a few stars. That’s the service they axed. They retained Periscope for now. But Vine’s gone. A piece in Billboard talks about how Vine stars made a last ditch effort to save the platform turned feature, but in vain.
So the next time someone tells me about millennials and all that this generation stands for as the basis for new business opportunity, I’m going to give them the reference of Twitter as my counter.