Who would miss out on President Trump’s unrefined tweets that have reached people across the globe through an exchange of comments and opinion that brought up a lot of conflicts? The 45th President of the United States is so active with Twitter that social media has been his platform to break news, have a feud with his critics and stir up controversy on racism and among other things.
Despite all the attention he is getting from the media and netizens, this has not solved Twitter’s apparent problem to convince more people from signing up or creating an account with them.
The fact that one can read tweets without signing up, results to Twitter less convinced audience to create an account.
The Twitter Struggle Is Real
Another struggle is, even though Twitter is very popular among celebrities and well enjoyed by solid fans who want to be updated on their idols whereabouts or just simply want to know their two cents, the app is needing much effort to use, even difficult if you ask others.
So having the impression that using Twitter can be burdensome makes it even harder to explain to people why they need it.
And speaking of impression, Twitter is also dealing with its image problem being too slow to act upon inappropriate behaviors and harassment. This statement was actually from Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter on a recent research note.
With that, Twitter user base tumbles with the significant number of audience and users compared with the 2.2 billion active users Facebook has.
Twitter had only an average of 330 million monthly active users in the final three months of last year. This data did not change from the previous quarter and even below the estimated 333 million in comparison with its other competitors.
Facebook: The Social Media Godfather
Facebook being the grandfather of social media, which outwardly seems to be very difficult to catch up with along with Instagram, with more than 800 million users, implies to less advertising opportunities for Twitter.
Because of these kinds of competition, it became harder for Twitter to attract enough advertising revenues to make up with all of its expenses.
It is difficult to target a certain audience and promote advertising channels if they are not even active on the network they want them to interact and be receptive with. The more users that register to a certain network, the more new potential ads one can exhibit depending on your target audience interest and behavior.
Since Twitter hadn’t turned a profit because of these competitions, the company has been cost-cutting and introduced new revenue streams, such as live videos.
To add to the beating, the company has been dealing with, Twitter is making its efforts to weed out fake accounts, remove abusive comments, hate speech and deal with these alleged Russian agents striving to disseminate falsified or altered information.
Twitter attempts to solve each problem, but other problems continue to come their way.
Twitters Problems Looms And Grows
According to Michael Connor, a distinguished media executive, entrepreneur and currently an Executive Director at Open Mic, whose group protect individual privacy rights and improve corporate governance standards for online privacy that ensures that data analytics practices are fair, open and transparent, said that Twitter has been playing a whack-a-mole with these problems. “They say they have the problem under control, but they don’t know what the problem is exactly.”
Add to that, a 3 percent drop also occurred in the premarket trading because of the revolving-door workplace the company has become for Executives.
Cite for example Anthony Nato, Twitter’s Chief Operating Officer resigning to accept the Chief Executive Officer position at Social Finance Inc. (SoFi)
On the bright side, on its 12-year history, Twitter has finally reached a milestone, a short-term satisfaction to its investors by making money for the first time. Although, this might not resolve the company’s struggle all at once, of course.
But this is good news for the company, considering that Twitter grew revenue by 2 percent to $732 million in the final three months of 2017. That’s actually above the $687 million that analysts polled by FactSet were expecting.
Its net income — a first — was $91 million, or 12 cents per share. Adjusted earnings were 19 cents, above analysts’ expectations of 14 cents. After the results came out, the company’s stock jumped more than 17 percent in morning trading to $31.64, its highest level since 2015.
Twitter Is Finally Profitable
According to Daniel Ives, Head of Technology Research at GBH Insights. The quarter was a breath of fresh air for investors that have patiently waited for this turnaround story to manifest after years of pain.
Well, as much as Twitter wants everything to go on a smooth sail, others think this might not always be the case. While investors choose not to micromanage Twitter, they would at least want the organization to have a good level of management where issues are properly and immediately handled.
Twitter continues to act upon these issues and implement new policies that would help in resolving past issues. And even though there’s a lot on their plate right now, their renewed focus on the matter should help them improve according to Pachter.
Everyone wants to belong in a community where they would be safe while free to express what they feel or think. And every social media platform should have the responsibility to provide the best service and protection to their users.
It is not enough to say they care, words become nothing when the situation has already become too difficult to handle. What people want to see is how fast they can put out a fire in these kinds of situations. Active users where they benefit from can also be their greatest critics.
Now, if everyone thinks that celebrities benefit the most from getting sponsorships based on how vast their number of followers is, a report from New York Times actually exposed how shady the global marketplace can be.
Celebrities Still Buy Followers And Likes
It was actually found out that some celebrities would buy fake retweets or followers. There were talks that some people have only been popular because they were buying followers or views.
Very well known people lost more than million of followers when these bots and fake accounts were taken out in an effort for Twitter to do some countermeasures behind these people getting smarter on how they actually do it and earn money at the same time.
Last June, Twitter said in a statement that they are already expanding their resources and team, and building new tools and processes to stop these fake accounts from popping out.
According to Forrester Research Analyst, Erna Alfred Liousas, while Facebook is dealing with its number of fake accounts as well, “it may be “more elevated for Twitter” because there has been so much focus on its monthly user numbers. Anything that could jeopardize advertisers’ ability to see how many people they will reach, she said, “is going to cause concern.”
In Patcher’s opinion, Twitter’s CEO Jack Dorsey leaves little room for innovation on how he runs the company with “benevolent autocracy”. Because of his divided time being the head of payments company, Square.
It became a question of whose running the company.
It’s very important that Jack continues to run the company with such power that he also seeks to use it well and for good ends, and very much able to balance well internal and external issues.
A very different situation when it comes to Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. There won’t be any fears for Mark even if there would be changes on his invention because, at the end of the day, he still is the person whose final say would matter upon a dispute.
Twitter did not comment about this. On a conference late last year, Dorsey have said that it ’s not about the amount of time he spends at one thing, but how he spends the time and what they’re focused on.