Mark Higginson

Manifesto
How attention flows on the web

 

23 July 2014

Executives hope to shift the perception of Twitter from a social network to a broadcast platform.

#### Under Pressure, Twitter Tries to Resize Itself

This article from The Wall Street Journal says that Twitter has continued to double revenue quarter-on-quarter. However it has yet to make a profit. The notion its purpose is less a social network and more about broadcasting messages is indicative of the need to fix this; yet this is a problem for shareholders rather than users.

This focus on making a platform beneficial to advertisers is what ruins social networks. Much of Facebook’s functionality is still surprisingly poor which makes you wonder where the engineering focus has been directed. This recourse to what amounts to traditional advertising, with an element of targeting, is depressing given the promise of the medium.

Let me know what you think on Twitter