Twitter, a micro-blogging
social media network, announced that it reached 100 million active users.
Twitter has also
marked 82 percent increase from the beginning of 2011. It is on track of adding
26 million more by the end of this year. But Twitter is yet to capitalize on
its growing popularity in the social media space.
American Internet users devote more time to Facebook than
any other site, spending a total of 53.5 billion minutes a month using the
social network at home and at work. That’s more than Yahoo (17.2 billion
minutes), Google (12.5 billion), YouTube (9.1 billion), Blogger (724 million),
Tumblr (624 million) and Twitter (565 million) combined, according to Nielsen.
Social media is gaining momentum. Twitter is on its dynamic phase as users are tweeting
from desktop, laptop or mobile. Globally, there is massive upsurge in its users
and popularity and much more is expected.
However, Twitter is
yet to focus on its revenue streams. Twitter announced expansion of its
promoted tweets advertising model where users will see promoted tweets other
than just those companies they have selected to follow.
The new advertising
model can be annoying for the users as they might not want to follow something
where their interest doesn’t lie. It will affect the number of users, especially
youth as they are maximum tweeters.
The neck-to-neck
competitors like facebook and google+ can threaten Twitter if it does not
utilize the online opportunities and draft marketing strategies carefully. Facebook
succeeded in their business because it could connect with global brands and map
consumer behavior.
The social media brand that Americans spend the most time
with is Facebook, by an enormous margin. During May 2011, Americans spent
around 53.5 billion minutes on facebook.com from computers at home and work.
That was up 6 percent from 50.6 billion minutes in May 2010.
Twitter is globally
gaining its popularity for micro-blogging service which other social networks
doesn’t have, but if expansion of adverting model has negative impact then
twitter might have to take other steps.
The existing model
is doing well but without hard figures to back this claim it is not that
reassuring – ‘exceeding expectations’ is tired fudge used by too many
companies,” said Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter.
Meanwhile, Twitter is launching a Chinese language
function, so users can tweet and read tweets in the language. This is
surprising because since 2009, Twitter has been banned in China.
China already has a successful microblog called Sina’s
Weibo, which surpassed the 100 million user mark before Twitter did. It is used
extensively outside the country. This might dash Twitter’s hopes of making it
back into the Chinese government’s good books.
Despite its strong
growth trajectory, Twitter is in challenging position. Costolo does not want to
float Twitter until he has built a robust advertising business, which is
understandable, but there is mounting pressure for Twitter to go public,” said
Eden Zoller, principal analyst, Ovum.
Social media account for 22.5 percent of the time that
Americans spend online, according to the Nielsen report, compared with 9.8
percent for online games and 7.6 percent for e-mail.
Twitter needs to
strengthen its marketing strategies to attract businesses to advertise on the
site. It is a simple model for users.
By Rashi Varshney
[email protected]
