Could we be entering a new realm of the post-social media?
Twitter has long been in close competition with Facebook, this is a known fact and we don’t need to dwell too much on the details leading up to this point. Both platforms offer a similar experience but with slight differences that result in a ‘one or the other’ choice; rarely do we hear of someone that spends a near-equal time on both social media websites.
However, the social media landscape is moving back to a pre-Twitter era, where Facebook dominates with little-to-no competition. Facebook has a constantly growing user base, with 14% increases every year, currently sitting comfortable with 1.6 billion users active at least once a month. Twitter however, has ‘only’ 320 million within the same time frame.
As it stands, Facebook are winning the battle in just about every department: User base, ease of use, security, cutting abuse and cyberbullying, outside projects and most importantly, profits; Facebook holds a firm grasp on the lot. Granted, the general nature of each site would favour Facebook in each of the selected subjects, but regardless of the punches Twitter can throw, Facebook has enough in the tank to deliver the knock-out blow.
With Twitter announcing that shares had dropped by 12% during the last three months of 2015, it’s been a catastrophic time for investors who have seen the company lose half of its value, with share prices falling to below £10 last week, compared to £19 in November. There won’t be many rushing to explain the problems facing Twitter within 140 characters.
Let’s not forget, this isn’t the first social media platform to hit the dust, MySpace witnessed a similar fate and there’s probably only one person that still exclusively uses it, that guy in a white shirt with a questionable grin – Tom. This isn’t by any means a certainty, Twitter could still rise from the ashes and become the powerhouse it once was.
So what are Twitter doing to stop the rot? The answer is simple: Expand upon the ‘while you were away’ feature. In essence, this is Twitter’s version of ‘Top stories’, nothing new or innovative, just a straight forward feature. It’s been around since early January 2015, but the algorithm that decides what actually makes a top tweet has now been changed ever so slightly.
The change prompted the surfacing of #RIPTwitter, as users seemed unimpressed by the real-time service distancing itself further from its main selling point, with one poll of 3,311 people indicating 86% were against the change being forced upon users. Thankfully for those people, the change carries an opt-out option, but you do wonder how many users are actually aware of this.
You may be thinking this means absolutely nothing, but this change is going to make brand engagement even more of a challenge for businesses. When someone logs in, they now see the ‘while you were away’ tweets until refreshing their timeline, thus bringing real-time updates back. Only 31 per cent of Twitters 320 million users log in on a daily basis, so this move does make plenty of sense for Twitter, but it means there is now even more emphasis on businesses to drive engagement and increase the popularity of tweets to make it into the holy grail of the ‘while you were away’ timeline.
From all of this, we can safely assume some businesses will want to ease away from Twitter in favour of Facebook, which won’t exactly help get back the $100 million losses from the last quarter– what’s the point of spending more time on a Twitter campaign when you can get better results elsewhere? But wait, I said ‘some’ for a reason.
We may witness a changing approach to Twitter, businesses could adopt a far more ‘human’ presence than we see today. There will be even more rewards for having your tweet go viral; as we’ve seen countless times, the viral tweets tend to be responding to a customer in a humorous manner, or posting something so topical it catches attention. Perhaps we’ll see businesses just about everywhere discussing the football with fans during the weekend, thoughts on The Apprentice, or perhaps how the tea in the office isn’t up the usual standard on that specific day?
Only time can tell, but I wouldn’t rule Twitter out just yet, this bird still has wings.
