With the recent announcement of Twitter finally adding features such as super tweets and newsletters into their platform, our first reaction was “about time” then our second reaction was “this won’t work”. As any long-term user or investor would tell you, Twitter is a great platform but it has been poorly run for a long time (that’s what happens when you let your CEO start a side hustle that’s larger and better managed than yours) and has only now made a serious attempt to monetize its platform and they’ve got already it wrong and it’s infuriating.
One of best ways you know a great TV show will fall on its face is when the geniuses writing it don’t know their own show or what makes it valuable. Case in point, many were disappointed by the Game of Thrones terrible ending but for us, the writing was on the wall when it became clear, from at least season 4 onwards, the showrunners had no idea about the show they were writing. Jack Dorsey is smart and talented but we get the similar vibe about Twitter as its leadership seems aloof to what makes the platform valuable (SPOILER ALERT: it’s not tweets, we don’t care how much Dorsey’s first tweet went for).
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£2.5 million for this? Never has "who" mattered more than "what" in the history of business |
That aloofness has subjected Twitter to serious pressure from investors and competitors to establish a recurring revenue relationship with its users and to its credit has taken steps to with a new ecommerce feature which include newer formats and buy buttons and a new “super follows” feature that allows users to charge for content which is all well and good but Twitter are approaching its new changes wrongheaded as nobody values tweets, even good ones.
There’s a number of reasons why these changes are unlikely to work but the number one reason why they won’t work is because they’re trying to move down the funnel (not the worst move. That would be entering the streaming wars with a pee shooter) instead of moving upstream. Twitter is highly aware that advertising is crappy business unless you’re Facebook or Google but it’s missing a trick by making changes to its format instead of its business model as the San Francsico based company are slowly (really slowly) realizing that its users value its apps and tools more than tweets as most users would love an edit button (which twitter is planning to add) but we’d love a spellchecker and would pay for it (Twitter, please buy Grammarly before Microsoft or google does). Twitter already has string of great apps and if they created a suite of apps and tools and charged to access them, Twitter’s valuation and share price skyrockets. In one move, Twitter secures not only new subscription business but a highly lucrative vertical.
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| Twitter can become a software giant and acquiring Grammarly is how it starts |
In sum, Twitter’s future is (or at least should be) less Facebook and Google and more Adobe and/or Atlassian and the quicker it realizes it the better. To Twitter’s Investors, if you see the social media giant make another ill-fated horizontal acquisition (R.I.P. Periscope and Vine) or worse tries to move down the funnel with an ecommerce acquisition (Amazon. Need we say more?), exit your position, fast.
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