Provocative question, I know. And a valid one considering the rough ride its stock has had over the past week or so. The company announced its quarterly financial results last week - its second since going public last November - and while revenues continued to grow, so did expenses and red ink. Stagnating user growth also spooked investors, who promptly sold off their shares en masse.
Fast forward to this week and the selloff continued as the first lockup period expired - and early investors headed for the exits. As I write this, the stock is testing all-time lows as speculation grows over what Twitter will do next to turn its fortunes around. Scary times in the Twitterverse.
For what it's worth, I am a huge advocate of both this company and the service it provides. It is a true innovator that, perhaps more than any other social media service - including Facebook - has transformed how we connect online. But it's hard to ignore the obstacles it now faces as it tries to connect with users who may not always "get" the latent power and sophistication it brings to the online space. A bit of a rethink may be in order.
I wrote this article for Yahoo Canada Finance: What Twitter needs to do next
Your turn: Do you use Twitter? Why/why not? (And while I'm in shameless-plug mode, my handle is @carmilevy)
One more thing: Yahoo Canada Finance launched its new Facebook page today - link here. Feel free to like it because I know how much y'all love reading what I write.
Posts
Sacrificial
2 days ago
3 comments:
I started using Twitter (@dwagonman) not too long ago so I could follow people like Yogscast but ... there's a lot of idiots who infest it sadly.
There's the ones that troll sites like uksnowmap.com with false reports
There's the ridiculously spammy ones (including celebs)
And there's the character limit ...
It's a great idea but it depends heavily on its users. Bad users = bad experience. Good users ? Let you learn more about them. But it seems more like a news about celebs service than a social networking service.
I have been using Twitter for years and depending on who you follow, it works very well for my needs and is one of my favourite social media outlets!
There are the ones that try to spam you with stuff but I just unfollow those ones.
I don't use twitter.
I see and understand it's point, and it seems mandatory for journalists these days.
BUT...the price of TWTR stock is an entire other thing. I think our (U.S.) stock market is entirely out of whack, thanks to the fact that almost all of our economic recovery efforts since the Wall Street meltdown have been devoted to giving free money to Wall Street.
So we've had a re-bubble in stocks, especially Nasdaq stocks that don't make much, if any, profit.
Not just Twitter, but Amazon, Netflix, etc. etc.
Meanwhile, the average citizen here is not doing very well at all.
How long can that last?
~
Post a Comment