President Trump single-handedly endorsed Twitter and made national conversation through his tweets, however, the microblogging social networking site is still stagnant as a business. We cannot identify the time when exactly Twitter took Snapchat as a serious threat, nevertheless, we can assume August 2015, was the moment of realization for Twitter because on this day MTV used Snapchat for sharing small, backstage clips of everything taking place at the MTV Awards. The weird yet candid access which was broadcasted in those stories was exactly something the Millennials on Snapchat yearned to ingest.
Even though Twitter always appeared quite secure amidst all the competition, Snapchat certainly witnessed a spectacular upsurge in popularity as this particular instance made the platform the most desired screen for millions. The mass audience chose to watch the VMA on Snapchat rather than their TV screens.
With Snapchat’s steady turnaround in reputation, we are observing Twitter become inappropriate for a massive number of people who spend most of their time watching the screen – the majority of this user base is comprised by the Millennials. We are also noticing Snapchat openly confront Twitter’s vision which dictates the social site must be people’s first choice whether it is about covering live events in real-time, live news, or live online discussions on all the current happenings. Before diving into the fundamental details of why and how Twitter is fighting so hard when it comes to keeping up with Snapchat in the race, we should consider the analytics and stats first:
- Twitter without any doubt has a much more established business model and is older than Snapchat in the industry. Nevertheless, it is undergoing some difficulties with user retention and progress in general. User-friendliness is a great concern for Twitter – even their CEO Jack Dorsey confesses “the network can be perplexing”. Twitter also appears to be struggling with the word/character limit which made it popular in the initial days. Dorsey also acknowledges that Snapchat is “modern” and that not pressing any button is the way forward in the mobile space.
- Snapchat appears to be a kind of service which offers a sharing device that is precisely what users are in quest of at the moment. The public snaps allow sharp interaction and conversation not found on the mainstream social media otherwise. Stories enable users to share short-term pieces of more curated content. Plus Snapchat is generally just more fun. As per the CEO Evan Spiegel:
“Somewhere along the way, when we were constructing social media products, we overlooked that the reason we like to converse with our friends is for the reason that it is exciting.”
- The facts cannot narrate the complete story, nevertheless we can still see Twitter’s evolution has been stagnant for quite some time now whereas Snapchat is more aligned with a progressive outlook. If compared, the activities and user base on Snapchat seems to be way too loyal and penetrating than on Twitter. Snapchat is appreciated and valued twice as much as Twitter and is developing quicker than Facebook. Plus, it has only just begun testing with monetization.
- Twitter is working on fixing its engagement concerns in order to provide a superior experience to all twitter handlers, whereas Snapchat seems capable of attracting users easily because of the experience it already offers. Given their relative status in the social media hierarchy, it is difficult to make direct comparisons between the two; they do not offer the same things to the same users – which is not to state the administrations at Twitter and Snapchat cannot benefit from one another. Twitter needs to remodel, and Snapchat is still attempting to secure its revenue model. The two systems must handle these difficulties and put in place a practice clients can look forward to getting involved with.
Twitter Became Home To Citizen Journalists
To cut it short, Twitter never followed the market trends nor benefitted from the opportunity. In the bigger picture, it is surviving on #hashtags. Just a couple of years ago, Twitter thought its 140-character limit (which is now 280), was unchangeable. At that time, it was a place where news on events such as the Boston Bombing, and 9/11 was broken. It was the favorite platform where citizens and journalists can share, comment, and spread the news more rapidly than any news agency could.
Possible reasons why Twitter is struggling:
Disregarding Video Content
It looks like Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is just paying attention to those old times when he stated that “I want to make certain that Twitter is everyone’s first and favorite place that they check first thing before starting their day. For the main reason that it will update everyone about exactly what is taking place in the world.
Dorsey had a great opportunity to push this vision forward when last year this platform launched Periscope; a live-streaming app. That might have been the perfect means to benefit would-be citizen journalists on Twitter but then again Periscope just retreated somewhere into the background.
Vine and Periscope
Twitter then abandoned a looping-video app called Vine, purchased back in 2012 when Snapchat was just a baby. Vine and Periscope both could have been an answer from Twitter – and attracted interest among the visual-obsessed Millennials, but they had never been treated visually by this platform. Hence Twitter’s plain and outright abandonment of video eventually gave room to Facebook Live Videos as they became a major player in citizen journalism. Again, it was Twitter’s disregard for video content which enabled Snapchat to capture the attention of young consumers, desperately sought after by advertisers. This progress in the visual field on social network, was not a surprise rather it had been predicted almost every year. Yet, Twitter constantly failed to extract maximum benefit from this opportunity that came in the form of video content.
Conclusion
Concluding this write up with some facts and stats, so everything discussed above can make more sense. Daily active users of Twitter are around 126 million, while Snapchat has 186 million. For journalists and students from almost all the majors, Twitter has always been a hub of news, comments on news, and trends in the news industry – the social networking platform has helped many of us evolve our opinions on prominent issues, and update obsolete and latest information. This trend is predicted to change in the coming days due to competition, especially from the latest highly exciting social media apps. Localcabledeals.com has helped a lot of Digital Marketers and Researchers when it comes to staying constantly updated across the world via twitter. Nonetheless, citizen journalists and bloggers has also benefited greatly with fast internet and technological advancements.
