Twitter reveals improvements to rein in Facebook's lead
One of the most significant could be imminent changes to direct messages, which will allow users to share and discuss tweets privately, said Kevin Weil, vice-president of product, at the company’s first financial analyst day in San Francisco.
The chief executive, Dick Costolo, said: “I strongly believe private messaging virality is important to our long-term growth”, in a reference to content that goes viral.
The move comes after Facebook’s recent controversial introduction of a separate Messenger app which mobile users of the social network have been forced to use to communicate privately with other members.
Weil also said that Twitter users would be able to upload video in addition to short, looping Vine clips by next summer: “You should be able to record, edit and share your own videos natively on Twitter.”
Instant timeline
Twitter said that the site needed to ensure new users understood how to use it. An upcoming “instant timeline” will offer content without making them search Twitter for individual users to follow.“We’re exploring ways to surface relevant tweets so the content that is interesting to you is easy to discover … while still preserving the real-time nature of the platform that makes Twitter special,” Weil said.
Twitter has 284 million users, compared with Facebook’s 1.3 billion, and has been searching for ways to drive growth and keep users more active on the site. The company said last month that timeline views per user - a key measure of engagement - fell by 7% globally in the third quarter.
It would be possible to roughly double the number of Twitter users to more than 550m in the “intermediate term”, with a longer term goal of 1billion-plus, executives said.
“Consumption-first experience”
Anthony Noto, Twitter’s new chief financial officer, was not concerned that the number of posts on Twitter has remained flat at about 500m a day. The company wanted to get people to read more, rather than post more: “We really need to build a consumption-first experience.”One of his slides read: “We believe we have the best aggregated content on one platform in the world - much of which is unique, appeals to everyone, and is relevant on a daily basis … There are a number of potential growth drivers that, in combination, if all executed successfully, could drive over $11bn in revenue.”
Twitter said it had about 60,000 advertisers, while more than 9m small and medium-sized businesses had a presence on the service.
However, analysts were reserving judgment on the ambitious growth plans. Richard Greenfield, of BTIG Research, said: “The question becomes, ‘will the product innovations drive a significantly larger user base and greater engagement/time spent with the product?’ Time will tell.”
The company also said it would focus on building the fastest app, increasing speeds on Wi-Fi connections by 50%, with a 60% increase on mobile networks.
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