What’s next for Twitter?

By Bongani Masombuka, Senior Account Executive

Last week Twitter announced it would double the limit for tweets to 280 characters, in a bid to draw in more users and boost engagement for the social network.

This comes on the back of the introduction of a number of products that Twitter has rolled out over the past few months, ultimately making the service easier for brands. These include a self-service advertising subscription aimed at small businesses.

Is Twitter struggling and trying to keep up with the competition?

It remains one of the most popular social media channels, averaging around 330 million monthly active users, as of the third quarter this year. It is the go-to platform for news and live tweeting. But when brands consider which social media platform to advertise on, Twitter is not always the first choice.

Facebook is unquestionably the most popular worldwide social platform with around 2.07 billion monthly active users compared to Twitter’s 330 million. While it has always been useful for consumer brands, recent targeting changes have allowed business to business brands to run successful campaigns.

With over 800 million monthly active users, Instagam’s photo and video sharing platform has given mainly consumer brands the opportunity to market their products and services to a more targeted and attentive audience, all without spending exorbitant amounts of money on advertising.

LinkedIn, on the other hand, continues to be seen as the business to business social network of choice with 467 million members, up from 450 million members in the second quarter. Not only is advertising to relevant audiences highly targeted and user friendly, the data on the social network also comes in handy for a wide range of competitive analysis and audience segmentation.

With new features like increased tweet characters and efforts to make advertising on its site more transparent, could we see a possible shift in the growth and conversation of Twitter? Also will it attract the necessary revenue for future growth? Only time will tell.

One thing is for sure, though, with healthy competition in this space, the channels and reach of social media platforms continue to grow, providing companies with additional opportunities to reach their target markets.

Something we like, a lot.

 

All statistics sourced from www.statista.com.