It may seem that I am obsessed with Twitter but let’s face it — Twitter’s world has turned upside down in a matter of a few days. All appeared well for the microblogging platform that was talking video streaming, connecting and marketing in real time and becoming relevant to consumers in more ways than one only sometime back. The situation changed after it began seeking a suitor; it all came crashing for Twitter when its attempts in that direction failed.
Once the suitors expressed their disinterest in Twitter, the platform announced that it would lay off its global workforce by 9 per cent. It was said that the majority of these would be marketing and advertising jobs. Next, there was news of Vine — a video app that Twitter had acquired in 2012 — shutting down. Vine had become one of Twitter’s most successful acquisitions; it was even featured among the top listed in app stores. Even as people were preparing for Vine to fold up and what that signified, two high level exits hit the company — Rishi Jaitley who was leading the Twitter product in India and other fast-growth markets, and then Parminder Singh who was the managing director for Twitter’s key markets including India, Southeast Asia and Middle East and North Africa (MENA).
Was all this in line with a bigger plan? Not really; in fact, it was more like solutions under pressure. Soon after Singh’s exit, Twitter announced a sales restructuring breaking up its fast-growth market cluster in a more conventional model of India and Southeast Asia aligning with Asia Pacific and MENA reporting to the Europe, Middle East & Africa region. What next? The answer to that is unclear but it does beg another question — will this help Twitter? A sales restructuring that is cutting off what the company is essentially now seeing as flab may help in the short term, but can it change the bigger problems Twitter is facing. No.
One of Twitter’s main issues, if the disinterested suitors’ feedback is anything to go by, is the bullying and the trolling that has lead to an ‘unsafe’ environment which Twitter has not been able to control. In an earlier interview, Twitter’s former CEO Dick Costolo had admitted that the company had not moved fast enough in addressing issues emerging from trolling. What looked like a part of the overall social media parcel has become the noose around Twitter’s neck. And the platform has still not voiced any views on how it intends to address this.
The second issue is the one that faces any media company — running a profitable business. Facebook made life difficult for Twitter as it posted year-on-year growth in revenue and its active users. Wall Street expected nothing less from Twitter that was compared to Facebook in most conversations. For Twitter, revenue has always come much too slow entirely. Some of its recent efforts like the focus on mobile, the growth in some of the markets did help it in clocking in some numbers, but it still continues to post losses. Cutting down spends and scale can give some respite, but that is not a long-term solution.
A partner like Microsoft or Saleforce would have allowed Twitter to focus on the platform as someone else brought in the business expertise. But now, when it is on its own again, Twitter needs to disrupt what it does and how it does it, and it has to announce a plan in that direction very soon. Twitter’s product team continues to make changes to the platform so it’s more interesting to advertisers, but if the past is anything to go by, it is time for a grand gesture.
