Twitter Grows Up And Gets Serious
Twitter is no longer a start-up with a service that many assumed was a fad that would quietly disappear, along with the company. Its user base is growing at a rate reminiscent of Facebook; it has a strong developer community and a nascent business model. All this is promising, but Twitter still has its work cut out. It needs to show that the business model stacks up and generates margins for future growth. It must do more to nurture its developer community and produce a stronger roadmap for how it intends to keep the service fresh and compelling, in order to differentiate from rivals with their eyes on its crown.
Executive summary
In a nutshell
Ovum view
Twitter’s growth trajectory
A simple but effective service concept
Twitter’s meteoric growth
Is Twitter the new Facebook?
A broad base of users; international growth accelerating
Monetization strategy
Twitter putting in place a three-pronged strategy
The building blocks of a business model – but still a lot of work to do
Third parties make money from Twitter, but the company does not
Twitter’s “Firehose” strategy
Firehose is a valuable asset that is being opened to everyone
Promoted Tweets
First steps in a Twitter-controlled advertising model
Promoted Tweets face a number of challenges
The relevance of resonance
Twitter’s new advertising metric taps into conversational marketing
Commercial accounts
A stronger focus on businesses services and monetization going forward
Service development
Time for Twitter to up the ante
Time for Twitter to up the ante
Twitter sets sights on smartphones with in-house applications
Twitter must stay vigilant on security and privacy
Twitter and the developer ecosystem
Developers are central to Twitter’s success
Relations have become strained - Twitter must work to regain harmony
In a nutshell
Ovum view
Twitter’s growth trajectory
A simple but effective service concept
Twitter’s meteoric growth
Is Twitter the new Facebook?
A broad base of users; international growth accelerating
Monetization strategy
Twitter putting in place a three-pronged strategy
The building blocks of a business model – but still a lot of work to do
Third parties make money from Twitter, but the company does not
Twitter’s “Firehose” strategy
Firehose is a valuable asset that is being opened to everyone
Promoted Tweets
First steps in a Twitter-controlled advertising model
Promoted Tweets face a number of challenges
The relevance of resonance
Twitter’s new advertising metric taps into conversational marketing
Commercial accounts
A stronger focus on businesses services and monetization going forward
Service development
Time for Twitter to up the ante
Time for Twitter to up the ante
Twitter sets sights on smartphones with in-house applications
Twitter must stay vigilant on security and privacy
Twitter and the developer ecosystem
Developers are central to Twitter’s success
Relations have become strained - Twitter must work to regain harmony
LIST OF FIGURES
Figure 1: Growth in tweets per day
Figure 2: Twitter’s international growth
Figure 1: Growth in tweets per day
Figure 2: Twitter’s international growth