Things aren’t going so well for Twitter. Back in 2013 — around the time that the company had a flashy IPO offering — the company was worth $40 billion and was one of the biggest unicorns in the tech world. It had potential, and investors were keen on seeing it grow.
Flash forward two years and the company is now worth just one quarter of that, valued at $10 billion. It looks small compared to new giants like Uber, and stocks are at a record low as investors display pessimistic attitudes in front of the company’s fourth quarter earnings call on Wednesday.
What happened?
To put it simply, Twitter is suffering from a severe lack of growth. Quarter over quarter, the company has faced slowing acquisitions of new users: The company’s MAU count for last quarter is at 307 million, with a glacial growth of 5 million since Q1. In addition, the company has relayed on earnings calls the difficulty of acquiring new users, often attributed to the complexities of using Twitter for the first time.
Since the beginning of now CEO Jack Dorsey’s tenure, Twitter has undergone some pretty noticeable changes. In addition to changing the “Favorite Star” to a “Heart Like,” the company has lifted limits on DMs and released the topic-focused Twitter Moments.
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But these changes haven’t quelled the brewing unrest at the company. Most recently, four key executives departed from the company, leading to Dorsey holding a sort of pep rally designed to get Twitter employees to think of themselves as #OneTeam.
Meanwhile the company continues to fling out many ideas to make the platform more palatable to first-time users — possibly throwing spaghetti at the wall in the hopes that something will stick. The idea that’s polarized Twitter’s current userbase involves changing the feed to an algorithmic one, rather than a firehose — its detractors started an #RIPTwitter hashtag. Whatever the case, it looks as though the company is looking to change many aspects of the platform in order to finally get over this growth stagnation.
Wednesday will be an interesting day for Twitter as Dorsey and his team try to inject optimism and momentum behind Twitter. That will be a challenge.
➤ Twitter Is Now Worth Less Than Many of the Unicorns [Wired]
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