Twitter CEO, Dick Costelo, has recently and suddenly resigned but will continue to be active in the firm as a member of the board. There is an interim CEO in place but many are in favor of placing President and Head of Revenue, Adam Bain, in place as a permanent replacement. Bain is a favorable candidate due to his history with working for Fox increasing revenue from online advertising and the aggressive advertisement improvements he has made thus far at Twitter. These changes have come about in response to pressure from Twitter investors demanding improvements in retaining users and advertising. It is the hope that these sudden and dramatic changes will push the company into action for coming up with solutions to their problems with greater speed.
Twitter Users
Although approximately one billion people have tried Twitter, the majority do not end up using the social media platform on a regular basis for reasons ranging from lack of interest in Twitter to a lack of understanding how to use the app to its full potential. In addition to abandoned accounts, 80-90% of Twitter users use the platform to consume content but they do not actually create tweets themselves.
Twitter Ads
The most fruitful form of advertising is direct response advertising and investors are hoping that Twitter will develop it even further to become more profitable. These are one-click ads for signing up for websites or services or even buying products. Certainly more active Twitter users are needed in order to increase the potential advertising reach and response. The actual design of the Twitter feed is also something that needs updating in order to encourage slower scrolling such as on the Facebook newsfeed. The lack of variation of media types means faster skimming and scrolling and thus greater opportunity to miss ads altogether. Finally, investors want more user data to be available in order to offer more attractive advertising opportunities to investors.
Although Twitter will not provide further information, it has been discovered that they are experimenting with the ability to install applications directly from the Twitter accounts of news organizations. What they have officially announced thus far is that they are working on the ability for users to be able to discover products and places with greater ease by way of dedicated pages and curated collections from the likes of Nordstrom, Nike, TechCrunch and Elle Magazine.
