The social media company Twitter wants to double its revenues by 2023. To this end, it intends to wake up from years of lethargy and launch new services. They follow the example of what has already been introduced elsewhere in the sector.
CEO Jack Dorsey did not mince words during the virtual presentation for analysts and investors. “Let’s start with why people don’t believe in us,” he said. ‘The criticism is that we are slow and not innovative and we are not trusted.’ Dorsey combines the CEO position of Twitter with that of the payment company Square. He is sometimes criticized that both jobs are difficult to combine.
The criticism is that we are slow and not innovative and we are not trusted.
intends to do better in future, to launch new services and to tap into new markets. That should make it possible to reach at least $ 7.5 billion in annual revenue and 315 million daily active users by the end of 2023, an increase of 20 percent on average for each of the next three years. The Twitter share price responded positively to the new ambitions, in a declining market.
New services
The new plans include the possibility to give money to other users. With that, Twitter would follow the example of platforms such as Patreon, Twitch and YouTube. There would also be paid subscriptions to access a ‘super follow’ for certain twitterers, which would give access to exclusive content. The super follow was to be launched this year.
Work is also being done on more ways to have conversations. For example by having live audio discussions, think of the popular competitor Clubhouse. On Twitter, this service is called Spaces and it is tested with about a thousand users.
Users can also create longer posts with Revue, a newsletters service acquired last month. The newsletter function is available now.
Twitter is also considering creating ‘communities’ for certain topics, such as Facebook has groups. In those communities, the organizers could set their own social norms.
Advertising sales
Most of the planned revenue increase should come from advertising sales. About 85 percent of current ad revenue comes from brand marketing, and only a small portion comes from targeted advertising, something Facebook is much stronger at. Targeted marketing has become all the more important due to the rapidly increasing importance of e-commerce. Twitter is going to make more efforts in this area and thereby appeal to more small and medium-sized companies.
Open the internet
Twitter also advocates an ‘open internet’. Dorsey was referring to plans to amend US Section 230 law. It now prevents companies such as Twitter from being held liable for user posts. “ The necessary caution must be exercised when making adjustments, ” said the Twitter CEO
Twitter is also having problems in India. That market is growing fast, but there are plans to require social media companies to erase certain content and cooperate with law enforcement officials. Twitter has already refused to delete posts related to the farmers’ protest in India.