The use of Twitter has become as natural as waking up in the morning and reading the news. In fact, it’s the source of news for millions of users throughout the world. It’s also the source of funny anecdotes, updates from friends and acquaintances, announcements from companies and brands and quips from pundits and critics alike. So what happens if Twitter disappears?
Twitters rise to fame is the envy of start-ups and social businesses alike, millions raised in funding, a successful IPO and a name as ubiquitous as Disney. It’s one of the standouts in the social media revolution and is enjoyed by over 300 million active users monthly. The problem is, like many of its counterparts, Twitters struggled to find a way to affectively monetize its services.
Twitter has lost over $2 billion dollars since 2011 and is in the process of laying off 9% of its total workforce. Changes in the management, products, designs and features have done little to change its fortunes and their recent struggles to find a buyer have done nothing to instill future confidence in the service. Their share prices have plummeted 77% from their all-time high in 2013 and investors are leaving the once shining star.
With all of the doom and gloom, it’s easy to speculate that Twitter may not be around for the long hall…
If Twitter disappeared tomorrow, there would be a massive void in the media landscape. I specifically avoided the words social media here because it would be bigger than that. Twitter’s micro blogging format is unique, it requires less thought and allows for very candid and immediate posting and unlike Instagram or Snapchat, doesn’t require a photo, though most will argue that it helps your post when one is included.
The loss of Twitter’s quick distribution of links and content would be difficult to adjust too for its hundreds of millions of users. News and media outlets would have to find a new way to distribute their articles and celebrities would have to rely more heavily on Instagram to distribute their thoughts and brands. Consumers would have to find new content aggregators and search engines like Google and Yahoo would have an expanded role during global events. There would be less information passed around globally and less access to the information that exists.
The loss of Twitter would affect society. Replacements would spring up immediately, though I’m not sure they would be able to gain the same foothold Twitter has in modern culture. New apps and platforms are created every day, but Twitter has the jump on them. A massive cross sectional user base who’s already found ways to make it their own.
With all of this said, I don’t think Twitter is going to disappear any time soon. The monetization of Twitter as a single entity will continue to be tough, as expansion of features on the platform are limited by design. It will more likely be swallowed up into a larger company like Adobe, Salesforce, Apple, Microsoft or even Facebook who will take the data it produces and integrate it a larger marketing and content distribution platform.
Twitters challenges are far from over, but hopefully it will find a way to make itself financially viable soon so we don’t ever need to think about life without it again.
