Twitter India launches Lite for weak connectivity
Twitter on April 6 launched Twitter Lite in India in collaboration with Vodafone, a platform specially designed for regions where connectivity is poor. The Lite, which will come in six languages, isn't an app, but can simply be accessed via mobile.twitter.com. It will offer a few offline capabilities and save 70% data while being 30% faster.
Twitter ad revenue falls even after restructuring job cuts
Twitter reported the slowest quarterly revenue growth since its IPO in 2013. The revenue from advertising in the fourth quarter declined 0.5 percent year-over-year to $638 million. The company said advertising revenue growth would continue to be slow during 2017. Last October, Twitter cut down as many as 336 jobs (nearly 8% of its global workforce) as part of a restructuring strategy.
What is Twitter?
Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that allows users to send and to read messages, called "tweets". Created in 2006 by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone and Evan Williams, it ranks among 10 most visited websites and is used by many celebrities.
Is Twitter struggling for new users?
In a business heavily counting on user behaviour, Twitter faces tough competition from Snapchat, Instagram and Facebook. Snapchat filed its Initial Public Offering (IPO) last week. The company's net loss amounted to $167.1 million in the fourth quarter ending December 31, from $90.24 million, or 13 cents per share, last year. Twitter's user base rose to 319 million but was short of expectations.
What is happening in the company?
In the last quarter, when the search for a potential buyer failed, chief executive officer Jack Dorsey decided to cut jobs, sell Fabric developer business to Google and shut down Vine, the short-video app. The company also parted ways with their COO and CTO. Their workload was mounted on Dorsey, whose time is already taken up by his other job as CEO of Square Inc.
Twitter looked for buyers in 2016
The San Francisco-based company made news in 2016 that it was up for sale. However, after some deliberation, Salesforce.com Inc, Google and Walt Disney Co had pulled out of the buyers' race and Twitter shares fell by 18%. Salesforce CEO had reportedly said that Twitter "wasn't the right fit" for his company. Twitter also faced a string of resignations from the top roles.
Twitter considers paid membership option for select users
Certain users might soon be able to access enhanced services on Twitter through a paid membership option it is considering. In an email to select users, Twitter said the new tool would "make it easier to grow your audience and see great content". However, regular users are unlikely to be charged. Twitter currently has no significant revenue-stream except ads, which is on the decline.
Twitter relaxes 140-character limit for replies
Twitter has found a way to ease the 140 character limit for replying to tweets. Twitter has now excluded usernames from the character count for replies. This seeks to make replying to multiple users easier. Usernames will now be on top of the tweet, instead of a part of it. This will also reduce the trend of sending multiple tweets as replies.
