Big change awaits Twitter
Social media service cuts jobs amid big losses, criticism over handling of abusive users
NEWYORK— Sale or no sale, Twitter users are bound to see changes as it tries to appeal to more people and advertisers.
A new owner could clean up Twitter and curb some of the nastiness that’s become synonymous with it. Or perhaps a new owner would just show more ads. Or let it languish while it mines the best of what Twitter now has into its existing products and services.
All of this is speculation, of course, and there might not even be a new owner. Twitter’s stock has plunged after rumoured bidders are, well, rumoured to be no longer interested.
On Thursday, the company announced that it would cut 9 per cent of its workforce globally as its revenue growth slowed.
While adjusted earnings beat Wall Street expecta- tions, it reported a loss of almost $103 million (U.S.), or $138 million, before onetime charges and costs are removed. Twitter-owned Vine announced Thursday it would be effectively shutting down.
A new parent could inject fresh life into a 10-year-old company that’s never turned a profit and remains confounding to many people. Of course, neither Google, Salesforce nor Disney have acknowledged interest in Twitter. Even if Twitter stays independent, drastic changes to its service might just be what Twitter needs to be competitive with Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.
How might it change? Twitter becomes more like its new owner, if there is one Facebook’s absorption of Instagram and WhatsApp could offer clues.
Both services have kept separate identities, to an extent, and have experienced user growth. But slowly, they are acquiring Facebook-like features. For example, Instagram no longer presents feeds chronologically; they are now sorted much like Facebook’s news feed, using some secret formula known only to Facebook.
Though the change has turned off some early Instagram users, its user base has soared, to 500 million as of June. That’s nearly 200 million more than Twitter, even though Instagram is three years younger. As Instagram gets more users and a mainstream appeal, its content has diluted somewhat. But many of the street photographers, graffiti artists and tween minicelebrities who made Instagram what it is are still there — maybe just harder to find. Stays the same but with more ads Twitter has never turned a profit, and whoever buys it will need to fix this. That means boosting the user base, so advertisers would follow.
Google, anyone? The search giant is the leader in online ads. Imagine what its might and muscle could do to Twitter’s ad business. YouTube hardly had any ads when Google bought it; now, ads are so prevalent that YouTube is able to charge $10 a month for an ad-free version called Red.
Instagram has also inserted ads into users’ feeds. Atool for brands, not revolution Jonathan Cowperthwait, a Twitter user since 2008, said he’d be worried if Google bought Twitter because the online search giant “is the worst” at social services that aim to foster online interactions, beyond email. Its Google Plus service never took off; Orkut and Dodgeball closed. Cowperthwait said that rather than let Twitter live independently, Google might “try to shoehorn it back into their own social product.”
Salesforce, a company that provides internet services to businesses, has also been mentioned as a contender, leading to a lot of headscratching among users. Would Twitter become a business product, used for customer service and mar- keting instead of revolutions, neoNazi memes and political outbursts?
“Salesforce is a very technologydriven company,” eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson said. “It seems they would want (Twitter) mostly for the data that Twitter has.” The little bird falls out of the nest Remember MySpace? It was — the — social network before Facebook came along. News Corp., the stodgy media conglomerate, bought it for $580 million in 2005. But users started falling off as MySpace failed to keep up with Facebook’s speedy innovations. After layoffs and failed relaunches, News Corp. sold the fallen giant for $35 million in 2011, and that was just about the end of it.
It’s not unthinkable that Twitter could suffer the same fate under a big media company. Silence! Walt Disney’s reputation as a familyfriendly company is perhaps the clearest antithesis to Twitter’s soul, as many users see it.
Some users might welcome some thorough housecleaning that goes beyond the steps Twitter is taking to curb abuse and nasty behaviour on its service. One Twitter user, New York attorney Danny Mann, says that while Google has improved YouTube “in ways that were unimaginable at the time,” he finds many of his fellow YouTube users difficult. In this sense, it’s possible that even with Google’s weight behind it, the abusive and nasty nature of many Twitter comments would remain as is. Bye-bye Vine Launched in 2013, Vine popularized 6-second video loops that could easily be shared on Twitter.
In a note Tuesday, the company thanked its creative community: “Nothing is happening to the apps, website or your Vines today. We value you, your Vines, and are going to do this the right way.”
While Vine competed with everything from YouTube, Instagram and Snapchat, there didn’t seem to be a path to profitability. After launching many of entertainers to a level of fame, many moved on to other platforms that offered monetization and more flexible formats. With files from Raju Mudhar