These articles show that Twitter is in a really poor situation. Top executives are leaving. Users are fading. Lose money every year. Stocks keep falling. No one wants to buy it. It’s becoming a playground for the worst people on the Internet.
As for the question if Twitter is going to be the next Myspace, we need to analyze why Myspace failed.
1.MySpace facilitate connections between individuals, instead of interest groups. According to Reed’s law, the value of social network should depend on the latter one.
2.MySpace specifies topics for users. This is not a what a platform should do, it interferes with the ugc rule. This is at most the job of some famous social account, not the platform. There shouldn’t be restriction like this.
3.MySpace diverted its attention to serving eyeballs to advertisers. This is a wrong sequence. It first need to serve its users well, gain more loyal users so that advertisers would come forward. Serving the advertisers first is just wrong, it only leads to more users dislike and quit using it.
As for twitter, here are its problems.
1.It’s the era of pictures and even videos. Words get the least attention these days.
2.Worst people on the Internet gather here. Their behaviors force many to leave Twitter.
3.As a public platform by default, not everyone likes to show their status to all other strangers. And they have to be more cautious when tweeting which violates the relaxation feature of social media.
4.Twitter still hasn’t find the best way to launch advertisement on the app.
So, taking the lessons from MySpace, here’s what Twitter should do.
1.Transform into a video-based platform. 50% video, 40%pictures and 10% percent words would be a nice new composition of all the feeds.
2.Twitter company should publish new rules to identify the identity of every social account, so that people won’t do whatever they want because of anonymity.
3.Add a new function at tweeting: open to all or open just to friends.
4. Commercials should be at places where people dislike the least. This requires lots of a/b test to find the result. Suggestions would be putting them at the 3-second opening of the app or sneak inside the articles.
5. Find new way to gather interest group instead of using #. Its a rather loose alliance.
