Trading in Twitter’s shares was halted late in Tuesday’s session, after the stock plunged 18%, even though the company hadn’t yet announced first-quarter results. Ironically, tweets helped push the shares down.
After the stock market closed, the company reported that first-quarter sales came in at $435.9 million, which missed Twitter’s guidance of $470 million to $485 million. Twitter’s shares were down again by as much as 6% on Wednesday.
I've always regarded Twitter as a platform of polar extremes. At the one end, a very useful tool for finding stuff written by reporters, business professionals, sports personalities and celebrities. At the other, an ocean of useless, profane, and meaningless messages and spam from nobodies. "Nobodies" is the problem.
Facebook v. Twitter
As a social media platform poised for success, I believe Facebook had - and still has - one important advantage over Twitter: exclusivity. That is, people followed you because you allowed them to follow you, and vice versa. If someone has hundreds of friends, the chances may not be great that they know them all well - some were a prom date from '86, others their mechanic or hair dresser - but the chances are pretty good that they knew them somehow and the person actually exists.
With that in mind, it makes it easier for advertisers to roll the dice on promoting a post using "Your followers and their friends" on Facebook because It's a safe bet that you'll actually reach real people. If my own experience with running Facebook ad campaigns is any indication, this is correct. Advertising on Facebook gets results.
Free-For-All
With Twitter, it's generally a free-for-all and you don't really know who you're talking to. When you see that someone is following 43,000 people and has 43,200 followers in kind, you know it's a joke. Nobody's reading any of that stuff, they're just shooting their own mouths off into the echo chamber. Add to that Twitter's relatively rudimentary advertising platform - Twitter doesn't even come close to Facebook's geographic and demographic targeting capabilities - and you're going to have a problem getting people to cough up money to advertise on Twitter.
LinkedIn, though it isn't discussed much from an advertising standpoint, is in a similar position to Facebook: exclusivity. It boasts pretty good demo information (job, location, education), and it has an interesting advertising niche in that it charges companies to advertise their job postings while at the same time charging users to become "Premium" members so they can look at more stuff pertaining to their careers. So far, so good for LinkedIn, as their earnings have been on a tear. (Update: Hot on the heels of me highlighting LinkedIn's run of success, they're now getting taking a hit in the stock market, as well, after not meeting analyst's expectations for the first quarter of 2015).
Twitter has none of the juice that exclusivity brings. It's a wide open playing field and it's likely too late to go back and change that now.
Twitter Is Still Valuable
It's not all doom and gloom. I wrote last year that Twitter is a great resource when used actively and not passively. I still believe Twitter is most useful when reaching out and connecting to individuals using the @ symbol, as opposed to broadcasting generic messages which relatively few people will actually see. Using Twitter in this way has helped me and the businesses I work with.
Will Twitter be able to get their financial house in order and avoid an implosion? Time will tell. I hope so. It has become such a part of the communication realm's fabric that it's hard to see how it could all come crashing down. But then, if you had told me in the mid-'90s that Newsweek would one day sell for a dollar, I never would have believed it. Never say never.
Facebook v. Twitter
As a social media platform poised for success, I believe Facebook had - and still has - one important advantage over Twitter: exclusivity. That is, people followed you because you allowed them to follow you, and vice versa. If someone has hundreds of friends, the chances may not be great that they know them all well - some were a prom date from '86, others their mechanic or hair dresser - but the chances are pretty good that they knew them somehow and the person actually exists.
With that in mind, it makes it easier for advertisers to roll the dice on promoting a post using "Your followers and their friends" on Facebook because It's a safe bet that you'll actually reach real people. If my own experience with running Facebook ad campaigns is any indication, this is correct. Advertising on Facebook gets results.
Free-For-All
With Twitter, it's generally a free-for-all and you don't really know who you're talking to. When you see that someone is following 43,000 people and has 43,200 followers in kind, you know it's a joke. Nobody's reading any of that stuff, they're just shooting their own mouths off into the echo chamber. Add to that Twitter's relatively rudimentary advertising platform - Twitter doesn't even come close to Facebook's geographic and demographic targeting capabilities - and you're going to have a problem getting people to cough up money to advertise on Twitter.
LinkedIn, though it isn't discussed much from an advertising standpoint, is in a similar position to Facebook: exclusivity. It boasts pretty good demo information (job, location, education), and it has an interesting advertising niche in that it charges companies to advertise their job postings while at the same time charging users to become "Premium" members so they can look at more stuff pertaining to their careers. So far, so good for LinkedIn, as their earnings have been on a tear. (Update: Hot on the heels of me highlighting LinkedIn's run of success, they're now getting taking a hit in the stock market, as well, after not meeting analyst's expectations for the first quarter of 2015).
Twitter has none of the juice that exclusivity brings. It's a wide open playing field and it's likely too late to go back and change that now.
Twitter Is Still Valuable
It's not all doom and gloom. I wrote last year that Twitter is a great resource when used actively and not passively. I still believe Twitter is most useful when reaching out and connecting to individuals using the @ symbol, as opposed to broadcasting generic messages which relatively few people will actually see. Using Twitter in this way has helped me and the businesses I work with.
Will Twitter be able to get their financial house in order and avoid an implosion? Time will tell. I hope so. It has become such a part of the communication realm's fabric that it's hard to see how it could all come crashing down. But then, if you had told me in the mid-'90s that Newsweek would one day sell for a dollar, I never would have believed it. Never say never.
