{"id":258891,"date":"2014-06-13T16:45:00","date_gmt":"2014-06-13T21:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/?p=258891"},"modified":"2024-01-27T16:46:06","modified_gmt":"2024-01-27T21:46:06","slug":"twitters-executive-turmoil-masks-a-deeper-problem-confusion-over-what-twitter-wants-to-be","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mathewingram.com\/work\/2014\/06\/13\/twitters-executive-turmoil-masks-a-deeper-problem-confusion-over-what-twitter-wants-to-be\/","title":{"rendered":"Twitter\u2019s executive turmoil masks a deeper problem: Confusion over what Twitter wants to be"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Fans of Silicon Valley\u2019s version of \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d got a front-row seat to a shake-up in Twitter\u2019s executive suite this week, in which the company\u2019s chief operating officer Ali Rowghani was ousted<\/a> and Chloe Sladden \u2014 head of the media unit that has been a big driver of Twitter\u2019s success with TV networks \u2014 also left<\/a>. Somewhere between the backroom intrigue and the cheerful public-facing tweets of support for those departed executives is the source of Twitter\u2019s real challenge: Namely, what does the company want Twitter to be?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we already know what Twitter is, you protest! It\u2019s a lightweight, real-time information network or platform that allows users anywhere to post things of interest and reach a potential audience of millions. Within that description, however, lies a multitude of experiences \u2014 a hall of mirrors in which my version of Twitter<\/a> is nothing like your version, and nothing like that of the person sitting next to you on the train or the airplane, or at the basketball game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Is Twitter for connecting dissidents in Ukraine or Turkey with their supporters in other countries, and for speaking truth to power? Yes<\/a>. Is it for people who want to live-tweet their dissatisfaction with the Oscars or House of Cards or Game of Thrones or the World Cup? Yes<\/a>. Is it for celebrities who want to reach out to their fans to correct some horrible rumor? Yes<\/a>. And it is many other things in between.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who is Twitter intended to serve?<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Even those descriptions fail to capture the variations of Twitter usage: some users \u2014 in fact, close to a majority of users \u2014 never tweet at all<\/a>, or have tweeted only once. For them, it is a consumption mechanism, or maybe just another source of noise. A smaller group of users (many of them in the media or marketing field) create the vast majority of the content<\/a> on Twitter, and use tools like Tweetdeck to manage the streams, and complain bitterly (as I have) about the lack of filters<\/a> and features to help them tame the ocean of information.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"social<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Which of these markets is the one that Twitter needs to focus on or amplify? It\u2019s not clear that anyone at Twitter even knows the answer to that question \u2014 and I can\u2019t blame them, because it\u2019s a difficult one. As freelance tech analyst Ben Thompson noted in a recent post<\/a> at his blog Stratechery, a big part of Twitter\u2019s problem is that it was too successful too quickly, before it even realized what it was:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cThe initial concept was so good, and so perfectly fit such a large market, that they never needed to go through the process of achieving product market fit\u2026 the problem, though, was that by skipping over the wrenching process of finding a market, Twitter still has no idea what their market actually is, and how they might expand it. Twitter is the company equivalent of a lottery winner who never actually learns how to make money.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

According to a number of reports<\/a>, one of the reasons Ali Rowghani was ejected (and won\u2019t be replaced) is that CEO Dick Costolo wanted to bring control of the product under his purview, rather than the COO\u2019s. Twitter also recently hired a new director of product, former Google Maps executive Daniel Graf, presumably to try and get some traction with users and improve the lackluster growth<\/a> numbers that investors seem concerned about. Last year, Costolo projected Twitter would have 400 million users by the end of 2013<\/a>, and it has about 250 million.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A revolving door of product chiefs<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

As Thompson and others have pointed out, one of the most crucial factors for a tech or consumer-facing company is product-market fit<\/a>. Twitter has spent years now trying to get that right, and in some ways it seems to be farther from its goal than it has ever been. Co-founder and former CEO Evan Williams tried to shape the product and was ousted, then co-founder Jack Dorsey was supposed to help, then came Michael Sippey. Along the way there have been aborted features like the \u201cDick bar\u201d<\/a> and multiple redesigns that are supposed to appeal to new users but appear to be simply irritating the loyal and not attracting anyone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Photo<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And while Twitter\u2019s numbers fail to impress<\/a>, newer services that connect people quickly and easily and focus on short messaging \u2014 from WhatsApp and Instagram to Snapchat and Whisper \u2014 are rocketing skyward growth-wise. This is not lost on Costolo, one source told Business Insider<\/a>: \u201cWhen you talk to Dick about messaging, he\u2019s like, \u2018Sigh, that should have been us.’\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The media team that Chloe Sladden built up was supposed to be the savior of Twitter, because it brought in large media companies<\/a> as partners for second-screen type deals like the Olympics with NBC or the Oscars. And reaching out to celebrities to get them to tweet was designed to appeal to users who just want to follow a few high-profile accounts and see what they are doing. But many of the things that were done in the name of both of those efforts \u2014 large images, auto-play videos, and so on \u2014 have made the service less appealing for others.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stranded between many worlds<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

So at this point, Twitter is caught between two (or more) worlds: The catering to media entities and celebs doesn\u2019t seem to have produced enough traction<\/a> compared to other players like Facebook to make it worthwhile, and there hasn\u2019t been enough of a focus on tools or design features for hard-core users to keep them loyal. In some ways, the company is failing to serve any of its theoretical markets very well \u2014 and that includes advertisers, at least until acquisitions like MoPub start to show that they can help solve that particular problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As a longtime fan of Saturday Night Live, I can\u2019t help but think of an ancient skit in which a husband and wife are arguing over whether a new product<\/a> is a floor wax or a dessert topping. \u201cIt\u2019s both!\u201d the cheerful salesman (played by Chevy Chase) exclaims. The joke, of course, is that if it\u2019s a good floor wax, it\u2019s probably not going to be a very good dessert topping, and vice versa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the same sense, the things that make Twitter useful to advertisers and large media companies and celebrities aren\u2019t necessarily the things that are going to appeal to Turkish dissidents<\/a> or free-speech advocates or even just fans of the kind of quiet link-sharing that Twitter used to be known for, rather than the stream of frenzied hashtag and multiple-photo blasting that it has become.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Increasing the pressure is the fact that Twitter is a public company, and it has to show the kinds of growth in both users and revenue that can justify its vast market value \u2014 something it has so far failed to do<\/a> \u2014 and the public markets are not known for their patience. Not only that, but as previous social-media superstars like MySpace have shown us, the road to short-term market acceptance can also be the road to long-term irrelevance. Best of luck, Dick.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Post and thumbnail images courtesy of Flickr user Mark Strozier<\/a> as well as Shutterstock \/ noporn<\/a> and Shutterstock \/ Anthony Corella<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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Fans of Silicon Valley\u2019s version of \u201cGame of Thrones\u201d got a front-row seat to a shake-up in Twitter\u2019s executive suite this week, in which the company\u2019s chief operating officer Ali Rowghani was ousted and Chloe Sladden \u2014 head of the media unit that has been a big driver of Twitter\u2019s success with TV networks \u2014 also left. Somewhere … <\/p>\n

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