But in the second-quarter shareholder letter, there was no mention of Twitter’s new toy or business. And in any case, Twitter should be trying a number of approaches to get users to pull out their wallets for content... ideally, user-generated (remember TikTok?). Barring that, though, Twitter could create its own content. It could sprinkle some of the $873 million (not a typo) it spent in 2020 on research and development on making stuff that people want to watch or read... and charge them for it. Hey, it could work .
2. Extract value from the platform.
Galloway wrote... Value is created on [Twitter] every second. Influencers build followings, businesses find customers, ideas are generated and shaped. But Twitter, in a misguided posture of neutrality, lets all this economic
activity flow across its platform and neither cultivates nor harvests it.
How? It should be possible to easily sell goods on Twitter – and for Twitter to collect revenue from those sales (the company has been working on this). People with large followings – from which they can make a mountain of money – could be charged a type of follower subscription fee. Lots of other platforms (see: Instagram... Facebook... LinkedIn...) have figured out how to make money from having a lot of people buying and talking and learning on their platforms. Twitter has to try things... fail... and succeed. So far, it has done little, if any of those. 3. Create and curate content. In January, Twitter acquired Revue, a service that makes it easy to start and publish newsletters. It may have noted the success of Substack, a similar product that launched in late 2017 and already has half a million paying subscribers – that is, unique users who pay for a subscription newsletter. In recent years, businesses that deliver subscriptions – whether it’s to Netflix or the bacon-of-the- month club – that auto-renew to provide a steady and recurring revenue stream have been increasingly viewed positively by investors.
4. Try stuff and break glass and don’t be afraid to fail.
Twitter has held snowflakes in its hand – Periscope and Vine – and let them melt. The company is still small enough – with revenues of just $3.7 billion in 2020 – that a few good ideas could change the conversation entirely... from a boring, has-been social media app to a player that’s finally filling out its uniform and making a difference. But to get there, it needs to get going. ______ Twitter is the big airport that sees just a few planes come in every day... the dusty ‘69 Corvette under the tarp that needs a new gearbox and some love... the teenage track star who fell out of shape but still has the muscle memory to be a champion. It’s a platform with potential, but still needs some work. Will Twitter get there? Given the recent run- up in Twitter’s share price, some investors think that it will – or that at least it’s going to try. While its record isn’t promising, Twitter could still surprise.
American Consequences
27
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online