There is a solution to Twitter's identity crisis
Jack Dorsey is back at the helm of Twitter and the company is looking to return to the glory days it enjoyed between 2006 and 2012. However, while Dorsey has already made an impact, announcing plans to cut global staffing levels by 8% and streamlining other services – including Vine and Periscope – there is a bigger job to be done if Twitter is to return to popularity among users and brands.
With Facebook on course to hit 1.5 billion monthly active users this year (five times more than Twitter currently has) Twitter’s first job should be to address and clarify its purpose.
Twitter’s identity crisis
Twitter has many roles, uncomfortably stuck between single-use platforms such as WhatsApp and Instagram, and catch-all platforms such as Facebook or WeChat. Twitter can be used to keep in contact with friends and as a messaging tool, but really it’s best for sharing content and following news, making its purpose and value much harder to define.
Facebook’s determination to remain a relevant platform in social interaction led it to develop Messenger, which has ensured that users keep spending time on it, defying the predictions of disaster of few years ago. Facebook also recognised that its users don’t stand still, so when Facebook has fallen behind, it has been forced to innovate to keep up with its users.
Own the live events space
Twitter shouldn’t try to replicate Facebook. In fact, the opposite offers the best opportunities for Twitter, whose strength lies in being explicitly all-public rather than purely friend-to-friend. By understanding this, Twitter can focus all of its efforts on continuing to be the best place for the public to go to get the latest news – especially when it comes to events.
Twitter’s recent launch of Moments in the US is a start. Moments allows people to follow events more effectively than the current system of clicking on a hashtag and hoping for the best. While Moments is primarily human-curated at present, an obvious extension is to improve Twitter’s algorithmic filters so that it can completely own the live events space. Obviously this would become an imperative platform for keeping up to date with naturally occurring events such as natural disasters or a royal birth. There is room to tailor and expand on commercialised events too – from concerts and sports games to elections and social movements.
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These events are often created on a huge scale and have a very obvious way of enticing audiences, making them a great match for advertisers. Even better, Facebook still hasn’t cracked the live events space properly; the same privacy protections that users use to keep their own content safe becomes a serious constraint when people want to get a sense of what others are saying about big events.
This distinction means that there is much more scope for brands and marketers on Twitter if Dorsey and his team focus on the platform’s roots. Although Facebook is rapidly gaining on Google in its services for advertisers, by focusing Twitter on being the leading platform for discovery, news-gathering and celebrity/influencer engagement, and developing new ways to commercialise its offering, Twitter could see a dramatic increase in satisfaction from both users and brands looking to engage them.
Winning over new users
Twitter works best for users when they are able to follow groups of people who share a common interest, but it is often difficult to find these people in the first place. Without guidance, many people give up at the first hurdle because they can’t find interesting, engaging and relevant people to follow – and it just seems like another spam-filled channel. There are an estimated 20m fake Twitter accounts, which is why many users consider the platform spam-heavy. Twitter has to address this issue if it wants to be seen as a clear channel of content.
Brands and advertisers so far have loved the openness of Twitter’s data. They have been quick to use it for PR and to inform the planning process. But they’ve been slower to actually invest the kind of big and sustained money that would allow it to thrive against the competition. Among Twitter users, 34% log on more than once a day and 74% follow companies to get product updates. However, the average tweet engagement for the top 25 most engaging brand profiles is only 0.07%. So despite a clear desire for brand information by users, there is very little engagement actually happening.
In this next phase of development there’s a huge opportunity for the platform to work alongside advertisers to create something that builds real value for brands. That is true to the platform’s purpose. If Twitter focused on implementing a better set of suggested accounts for new users, strong filters and maybe a suggested list of “today’s reading”, it could not only draw new users in, but also attract users who don’t churn.
Rob Blackie is head of social at OgilvyOne
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