The Doom of Twitter
Well here we are in the current year, 2017. We have a lot to look forward to and a lot say good bye to. And if a lot of news from last year were to be believed, Twitter is one of those things we have to say farewell to. And like Friendster before it, it will soon become irrelevant and finally shut down for good. Well that’s what they keep saying that last year, at least. Come 2017 its still here. In a worst condition than last year, yes, but still here.
And this isn’t new news: Twitter has been predicted to die since two years ago. On January, 3 years ago, Twitter’s stock price peaked at $69.00 USD. After that it fell, then up again, then down again and it never recovered since. Right now it is around $16 and $17 and would probably keep falling from here on. It seems the people, the investors of Wallstreet, who has put their hope on Jack Dorsey when he became CEO, after a string of talents quit Twitter, has got it wrong and is doomed to disappointment.
So why is Twitter’s value falling? It’s mainly because Twitter failed to attract new users.
Way back after its stocks took a great plunge in early 2015, Daily Mail UK has reported that Twitter has admitted to have failed attracting new users. By February of last year, Twitter themselves reports that its growth has stopped. During the elections, the heated debates and the constant trolling of people from all sides has forced some users to even leave.
“Twitter appears determined to ignore its own terms of service”, writes Jonathan Weisman, in an article he wrote about why he left Twitter. And he’s right: Twitter isn’t exactly a public platform and it does has its own rules and guidelines. Rules that usually seem to to be ignored until it becomes a public scandal.
The handling of Twitter’s troll population is not that simple. When Twitter tries to enforced its rules they still get threats from users who do treat Twitter like it is a public platform that they will leave, calling Twitter “authoritarian” and invokes “free speech”. These are threats that they can’t afford because ad revenue is what mainly keeps Twitter alive. Less users mean a smaller audience to advertise to. So people who invested their money to advertise on Twitter would have hated how they are losing money just to advertise on it’s dwindling user base.
Another factor that might be seen as to why it can’t get new users is because Twitter is rivaled against fellow social media giant, Facebook. Facebook has more active users per day, has more features, and actually enforces their rules. This has never failed to attract more and more users and that means it has a broader audience that Twitter doesn’t have and what investors wants. If you put the two side by side there’s just no winning against Facebook for Twitter when it comes to user base(Facebook has 5 times more active users than Twitter). So it isn’t a wonder that Facebook has 23 times more advertisers than Twitter.
Image source: Pixabay
Right now, even though Twitter has released a lot of improvements to their product, they still seem to fail on marketing it as a mainstream social media. Twitter isn’t discouraged by these facts though and it seems they won’t be closing any time soon. Even now Twitter is still being used by many famous people, with lots of followers so there’s still value in it left. If Twitter finds a way to satisfy its users, quell the rampant trolls and appeal to newer users this year it might just be able to save itself.