Recently among all “Worldwide Trends” on Twitter, one trending topic about this blue bird itself can be pretty brutal. Twitter has been striving to sell itself to potential buyers, including several tech giants like Google and Apple. Unfortunately, Twitter’s final hope has vanished after Salesforce dropped its bid for this deal.
Founded 10 years ago in 2006, Twitter did not go public until 2013 winter. Once a super star to Wall Street, its stock opened at $26 per share on the New York Stock Exchange and was trading at $69 not long after. After reaching the peak, Twitter’s stock price has been slumping constantly and dramatically, trading at merely $18 per share this Friday. In less than three years, Twitter has lost more than 70% of its entire market capitalization, and is said to be targeting terrifying $10 per share in the near future.
Twitter used to be the one-of-a-kind online media platform and have a reputation for delivering breaking news 24 hours a day at an unsurpassed speed. Millions and millions of people used to rely on Twitter as their major source of information, while constantly contributing to this community as well. Nowadays, Twitter is still able to shape and create trends online through its 313 million active users. However, compared with Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, Twitter barely shows any superiority. It cannot catch up with multi-purpose Facebook which has 5 times more active users. Meanwhile, either Instagram or Snapchat has its own killer features and those are apparently more alluring than “tweets”. Twitter tries to advertise its live video streaming app Periscope, while it has to face the challenges from Facebook, YouTube and Snapchat. Additionally, according to the lastest report, Instagram appears to be equipped with live video feature soon as well — following the steps of its parent company, Facebook.
Another thing is that Twitter is often facing critics over its poorly regulated contents. For instance, racial and violent tweets can be seen every now and then but they are not well filtered and banned. Other inappropriate information and contents appear even more frequently and this cultural and content unfitness is considered as one of the major reasons that Disney has walked away from the bid.
After bids were closed, it is still unclear if Twitter has already hit rock bottom. In this post-fail-to-sell era, Twitter is striving to strengthen its live video streaming service and transfer itself into a more diversified media platform with more exclusive contents after establishing partnership with big players such as National Football League. Will this blue bird finally rise like a phoenix out of the ashes and fly high again?
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-twitter-m-a-salesforce-com-idUSKBN12E22Q
“Twitter charts solo path as Salesforce rules out takeover | Reuters”
Twitter has certainly a lot of potential and market share but it is a very difficult platform to monetize. Most peace using it either for customer support or to follow people and company news. In the end I think it’s better for Twitter to stay independent as it is the most important source for real time news.
Dear Min, thank you for your blog! Personally, I have never used Twitter, but I am using Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat. I think there are more people like me, which is of course why Twitter is facing trouble. While I do understand why people would use it for the latest news, I think it is simply not enough to let people return. I have indeed also heard that Twitter is often critized for its poorly regulated content, making people leave. Thus, I think this is the first issue Twitter needs to address. After that, they should listen to their users: what makes them return to Twitter, and what other features would they like to see on their website? It is important to keep up with what their customers want, as switching costs to switch to another platform (such as Snapchat or Instagram) are low. Let’s hope Twitter finds a way to rise again!
Hi Min,
Interesting to read the problems that twitter is facing at the moment and when I look to my own experience they are all true. With the current development of facebook you can do everything and a lot more than you can with Twitter. Do you think it is possible that such a big company goes bankrupt and it lose their total share holder value? Or how do you think they can prevent theirself against a bankrupt? Or should they try to merge with some other big tech company for securing the future and the shareholder value?
Greets,
Thieme