Twitter celebrates its 10th birthday. Many Twitter users were concerned and even angry because it might remove the unique personality of the social media platform.
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But analysts question whether Twitter will be as strong in another 10 years, with big challenges ahead for the company, including users who still don’t quite understand it, stalling growth, and a resistance to new features from its most fanatical users.
The Twitter CEO said the 140-character limit is “a handsome constraint” and that the social media will never lose that kind of limit. With that said, how great would it have been to have the social network during a tragedy such as 9/11?
According to the micro blogging website, it now has more than 300 million active users – far less when compared with Facebook’s 1.5 billion users making it more popular, faster, and the choice of more marketers.
The site was founded by Jack Dorsey who sent the first Tweet simply saying “just setting up my twttr”, but it has become one of the most important means of communication across the globe. The company employs 3,900 employees around the world in more than 35 offices. “Love Twitter”, invites people to celebrate its first decade with the #LoveTwitter.
However, how Twitter plans to take a walled garden approach to keep users with brands remains a hot topic.
It’s a touchstone of the foundations of the Twitter of 10 years amid change, but no longer are the moments that happen on Twitter as groundbreaking as they used to be – it’s a new normal where world leaders respond to world events, celebrities have spats, brands try to imitate the Oreo moment (quite often getting it horribly wrong) and a picture of a fox trying to take someone’s pants off at a London night bus stop becomes a news story rather than the latest hugely retweeted meme.
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Another issue is that Twitter is still an afterthought in the mix for many – something Jim Coleman, UK chief executive of We Are Social (which has tailored social drives for Google, Adidas and Cadbury) believes needs to change. Past year it introduced a “report abuse” button on the site in a bid to end harassment on Twitter. This is something Twitter arguably only started taking seriously towards the end of past year with the launch of curated news offering Moments. Twitter is going to have new features in the future but it will be consistent with how the users want to use its services. It not only created a direct line of connection between public figures and their fans, it also changed the very basis of how we communicate with each other.
