I found that line interesting, because I often think of Twitter as a niche forum favored by technology workers and celebrities.
I think Twitter's biggest problem is lack of vision and a commitment to that vision. Going public was a big mistake for them, because Wall Street has no concept of what makes technology good or interesting over the long haul, they can only reduce things to the most simplistic metrics. Facebook is pretty much a known quantity at this point, and is the biggest social network that has ever existed. So now everyone wants to measure Twitter by the Facebook yardstick. But Facebook only has 5 times as many active users as Twitter, and I would bet money that the average Twitter user is more than 5 times as influential as the average Facebook user. If you can't build a viable company with 300M of the most influential users, then something is very very wrong in the world.
The biggest tell-tale for me is that everyone knows exactly what Facebook is, and many people (especially younger ones) see it as a crufty accumulation of old friends and family that they have no interest engaging with. But for Twitter there's still a majority of people who "don't get it", and yet it has been a revolution for celebrities and the aforementioned groups in terms of what it's done for the public conversation. To me this is all an indication that Twitter has way more upside than Facebook. In fact, I'd be willing to invest in Twitter if I thought their leadership was strong, but my big concern is that they don't have a clear vision, and therefore they will get picked apart by the clueless hand-wringing of Wall Street until they become so cheap that Google or Facebook snaps them up.
One of the intriguing thing I'm keeping my eye on is that if TWTR keeps sinking, will there be any other follow-up effects? Because if TWTR can't convert eyeballs to money at the Wall Street-expected rate, that suggests in that invester-sphinctor-tightening way that maybe the other companies depedent on that model may have trouble too.
The market's faith in eyeballs ---advertising---> money has always struck me as excessively strong. Not that it's a stupid idea, just that Wall Street seems to believe it's about 5-10 times more effective a plan than I do.
Chris Sacca said a lot about this recently. http://lowercasecapital.com/2015/06/03/what-twitter-can-be-2...
It isn't about niche celebrities, but celebrities as a whole is their niche. And journalists, of course. Newspaper websites publish vast quantities of tweets because it costs them nothing, it means you indirectly consume a lot of tweets.
But the celebrity content consumed by journalists is as a whole still a niche, even if all celebrities are on there.
FWIW I think it would be a mistake to abandon that, but it does raise questions about how they grow.
Except Instagram has more active users than Twitter...
It's not about active users, it's about how it's used.
> Everyone had an AOL keyword. AOL isn't dead, but it fell hard. Ubiquity isn't enough.
Every business having a Twitter account won't save Twitter any better than everyone having an AOL keyword saved AOL.
Had AOL built itself as a web portal like Yahoo from the start it may very well have stayed relevant. I still have business partners (in non tech fields) that use their AOL email and news/portal services.
Twitter should make the many different and largely unconnected communities a first-class part of the Twitter experience, rather than this informal thing they are now.
You can't get much bigger (well known) as a brand/company than Twitter. From networks such as CNN, FOX NEWS, ESPN, ABC, etc... Twitter is everywhere! Everyone knows them.
So, there's a check. The issue happens with the second part : what do do with our fame?
Can Twitter use their power to make services that are profitable? Yes! Do they? No, not really :(
I often wonder why it takes so long for companies like these to blatantly monetize their services. They are backed by billions yet you rarely see an ad here or a "shop" there. Its as if they feel that its a bad thing to do. Its as if they feel that they are betraying the people using their services.
I feel that these services can survive with a little more push towards that. Then again I'm not the CEO or founder of that BIG company so I'm sure most would feel that my idea is not valid. It just frustrates me that you see so much potential (money-wise and service-wise) in a product/service yet it takes a long time to see those changes.