The Death of Twitter is Greatly Exaggerated
#RIPTwitter may be trending, but what does that really mean for Twitter? Ask four different people on the Eastwick Digital Brand Lab team about Twitter, and you’ll get four different responses. It’s one of the most polarizing social media sites out there; some love it, some hate it, and many don’t understand how it works. However, since Jack Dorsey returned to Twitter, the calls of its demise have grown stronger. With key executives leaving, low stock prices, and a massive layoff, it is understandable that many would predict the demise of Twitter. Twitter isn’t going anywhere any time soon, though.
Twitter is everyone’s favorite social media site to hate, but it still plays a crucial role as a rapid response system. From world events, to political debates, IPO and merger news, new product releases, and even major sports events, Twitter is often the first source to break the news. It’s ability to rapidly and quickly share information with the entire world is unparalleled. This function is still in high demand and is one that we at Eastwick frequently utilize.
Functionality
The basic mechanism of Twitter hasn’t changed in years, but in the last six months the company has released updates left and right, testing or deploying: Moments, Polls, and Gifs. It seems like there has been a shake up in Twitter’s mentality. The company is now willing to release more and more functionalities in order to increase its follower engagement. Additionally, Twitter’s other platforms, including Vine and Periscope have their own ecosystems built on top of Twitter that help increase the company’s importance.
From a marketing and communications perspective, Twitter is a wonderful tool for contacting reporters, watching trends, and helping tell your story. The sheer number of journalists on Twitter makes it easier to find and contact those who are interested in your stories. Not to mention the fact that breaking news on Twitter often gets picked up by traditional news outlets. This means that a company, which releases breaking news on Twitter can gain hard news coverage from it. Twitter’s rapid response nature also allows companies to watch and jump on trends as they are developing. This is a powerful tool for gaining awareness from the media and prospective buyers.
Show me the Money
Even with great functionality, at its core Twitter is a business, and a business needs to make a profit to survive. This is Twitter’s main problem. Up to now it hasn’t been able to monetize its users enough to create a profit. However, things are looking up. In 2015, Twitter partnered with Google to both show Twitter feeds in Google’s search (thus gaining more users) and to work with DoubleClick to increase its advertising targeting and analytics capabilities. While the DoubleClick partnership is a pilot, a successful conclusion could make Twitter more appealing to advertisers.
More important is Twitter’s acquisition of the advertising technology MoPub and the resulting new ability to monetize users who are not logged in. The Mopub purchase, occurring in 2013, hit a new level of importance in 2015 when Twitter expanded targeting tools and premium advertisements across MoPub’s network of applications. This doubled Twitter’s advertising reach to over 700 million global monthly users. In addition, Twitter can now advertise to users who aren’t logged in to any of it’s owned platforms. These new advertising abilities truly kicked in during last quarter of 2015, and by all reports were extremely successful. Twitter’s advertising sales grew to $432 Million during Q4 2015, which was a 97% increase year over year. If these new advertising capabilities continue, they will drastically increase Twitter’s ability to survive and thrive.
Bottom Line
As Twitter continues to struggle. It’s possible that it will fail, or that another company will swoop in and buy it; but, I don’t think that’s going to happen. In fact, I believe that the changes Twitter has made in the last six months — more user features and increased advertising capabilities — have started Twitter on the road to recovery. While #RIPTwitter may be trending, Twitter’s death is greatly exaggerated.
I am a member of Eastwick’s Digital Brand Lab, and am fascinated with telling stories online. Contact me via Twitter at @Alukomnik.
