Twitter Needs To Stop Following and Start Leading

Raul3 Mon Jan 25, 2016 10:31pm EST 1 Comment

In case you missed the news, 4 top executives left Twitter. This morning @JeffMacke covered the news like an insider.

Like every other negative moment in the last two stagnant years at Twitter, internet people [me included] are again tussled into the great online pastime of debating how to make Twitter work. CNBC found a nice fella who thinks they need to focus more on video. There were other good talking points, but right now let’s talk about Periscope.

Live streaming video is not for everyone. If I don’t like a snap I don’t send it. I am not a news anchor. I have watched 100s of Periscopes and the energy level is low. The social media game is about who can get one billion active users. One billion people cannot generate quality live video streams. Nor does it seem like they want to watch them. Twitter is at a huge disadvantage in the video department.

Can a 10,000 character limit right the ship? This is a way to curb Twitter users being sent away via hyperlinks. Facebook does it with Instant Article. More characters could work if executed properly [small tweets that can be expanded, if desired]. However both Facebook and Twitter are chasing Snapchat’s tail when it comes to in-app news. Mobile content is brilliant and easily shared in the app. If you share a Snapchat news piece via text message it sends the write up as a long scrolling image. The words are shared as an image, sort of like how @Jack tweets.

Getting outpaced in active users by Instagram is a huge blow. IG has lured anti-establishment folks back onto social media. They tag each other on posts at rabid rates. Instagram, Facebook’s little side purchase, has 100 million more active users than Twitter. Yikes.

The good news–Moments could be a hit. If it keeps having entertaining content it will catch on. ‘Flat earthers’…have you seen these bone heads? They use tidbits of science to ‘prove’ the earth is flat. On Moments today, Twitter put together a series of tweets where a rapping man from Atlanta named @Bobatl was schooled by pop scientist @neiltyson after he went on a flat earth tweet storm. Check it out here, it’s hilarious. I would have missed the exchange without Moments considering I follow neither of them. Even if I followed both their handles the scuffle would probably be washed away in my stream before I saw it.

I am an investor in Twitter but also a stakeholder. It was my coming of age news source and it has always earned my glowing endorsement. Now my revere is shifting–and I will dump the stock and cut ties entirely if need be, because a losers a loser. But for now my hope remains and I am not the only one offering up my best advice to the firm.