What Twitter Could Be – Chris Sacca

 

Sacca has expressed that Twitter can be a lot more and needs to look into monetization and also should hold onto the new users.

Latest Twitter news is regarding the social network’s investor criticizing the network and also analyzing different situations. It is seen that the top executives of the social network company took the questions from its investors in yesterday at the occasion of annual investor day in San Francisco. However, the renowned shareholder of the company, Chris Sacca, was not aiming to wait to share the advice for the company so it can fix the issues.

Sacca has noted in the post “What Twitter Can Be” that he has “a lot of Twitter stock”. Furthermore, he has offered a lot of criticisms and suggestions which are aimed at the company that is struggling. It was previously notified by the investor in the post “I Bleed Aqua” that he will do this. The post had been after the famous color scheme by Twitter.  The blog post that Sacca wrote was 8,500 words long and pretty extensive.

The good things that were highlighted by Sacca included that the revenue is coming strong, also the product launches are faster and the acquisitions by the company such as that of Periscope are a winner. However the bad aspect included that the growth has been stalled, the new users are not being hold onto and an utter fail with the media and Wall Street. However, the most strongly noted point by him was that Twitter has done not a satisfactory job when it comes to setting the expectations outside of the organization.

He expressed that “Despite that, my biggest concern is the abundance of public doubt and misunderstanding when it comes to Twitter’s vision and the near future for the service,” also that we shouldn’t be blaming the press or Wall Street, the company itself has failed to tell its story.

Twitter news reports that the investor further elaborated that the company has the boldness in its bones but it is required to be bolder than that. And it also needs to look into oversized payoffs with potential and bet them on larger scale. And also to question the aspects of the social network that it has been taking for granted till now.

Also the smaller teams have to be operated which do not require much permissions for the changes to happen. The company can also build the wrong things, it has that affordance. However what the company cannot afford is to build the things way slowly. In the blog post, Sacca also discussed that media is thinking of him as an activist investor, and also the one who is a troublemaker for Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter and his team.

 

 

Twitter Unveils ‘Audience Insights’ For Advertisers

Twitter has unveiled Audience Insights in an attempt to lure advertisers on its platform

Twitter Inc. recently had a failed advertisement campaign. Currently Facebook along with Google are leading the advertisement market with a huge market share shared between both parties. But the micro blogging platform miserably failed to attract any big name advertisers to its platform. Shareholders were concerned regarding this also advertisers and companies were not satisfied enough to post their respective ads on the social media forum. Therefore, in order to provide all of them with a better solution, the company has launched a service named “Audience Insights” that will help advertisers to ‘gauge user trends’, according to latest Twitter updates.

Twitter rolled out the consumer descriptive tool on Wednesday in an attempt to kick start its advertising campaign. It is believed that Facebook and Google earn major chunk of their revenues from advertising and Twitter could not capitalize on it so far. Hence, this descriptive tool will help the advertisers in understanding their appropriate targeted audience. Furthermore, the social media network giant claims that this tool will help the company to further enhance its medium for marketers and salesperson.

The product manager at Twitter, Andrew Bragdon said “Insights about people and markets help advertisers create powerful messaging that resonates. Today, we’re excited to introduce audience insights, a new tool to help advertisers better understand key audiences on Twitter.”

Basically, Audience Insights gives marketers as well as users related to business with an option through which they will be allowed to get access to the details of Twitter users. Furthermore, with the help of this tool, they can get detailed information on users’ activities, likings and disliking of brands and preferences. The company wants marketers and salesperson on its platform to boost its business through Audience Insights, as reported by latest Twitter news.

BidnessETC reports “The audience insight tool enables advertisers to find out about potential buyers by providing them with information of their demographics such as gender, education, marital status, and income.” Twitter lets anyone access information shared between users that are friends with each other on the forum. This shared information includes users’ occupation, behavior, and activities etc. Furthermore, the tool will provide graphs and interests that relate to the users in real time.

Hence this tool can be very efficient for every business user on the social media network as through it they will be able to target the appropriate audience and further boost business. After a failed ad campaign as well as miserably failing to attract advertisers on its platform, the company wants to compete Google and Facebook in the advertising market.

 

Twitter Blocks Accounts Of ISIS

 

The social networking service has taken strict actions against the ISIS as it has suspended accounts of the organization.

The American social networking website, Twitter, has taken strict action against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria.b informed that the management of the violations department of the website has blocked approximately 10,000 accounts of the Islamic state. The action is taken to stop the exchange of aggressive tweets, which is considered as the most aggressive action taken by the website against the ISIS.

Social networking experts believe that the organization has been using those accounts to spread their message. This strict action has been carried to answer the criticism that the social network service has permitted the activists of the Islamic State to misuse the social medium for spreading messages of violence and propaganda. Other experts believe that the Islamic activists have used the network for recruiting members.

Twitter news today reported that this is not the first time Twitter has acted aggressively against the controversial organization, as it had blocked 2000 accounts of its activists in the previous few months. An official of the social networking service has stated that the deactivation of the accounts has been done to aid the opponents of the ISIS, including some hacking groups and online detectives.

Twitter breaking news affirms that an anti-ISIS lobby had been working hard to track the accounts of the activists. In accordance with the laws of the website, a complaint can be filed against any account for engaging in some violations. These violations constitute harmful content, misleading advertisements, self-harm, and abusive behavior. It is quite difficult for the website to ban the networking means, as it aims to promote free speech in a network that transfers 500,000,000 messages each day in various languages.

The provocative activists have welcomed the blockage of the accounts, as they have stated that the blockage would play an important role in securing their activities from detectives. The anti-Islamic state lobby has stated that the suspensions would make their work convenient, which is sufficient to explain that the lobby believes that the social networking methods have assisted in promoting their organizational activities.

Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham is an Islamic militant organization that is struggling to establish a caliphate with their leader. It is currently ruling large parts of Syria and Iraq. Many experts are viewing this association as a threat to the United States of America. Now it is yet to be seen that to what extent does the suspension of the social networking methods are able to ban the activities of this radical group.

 

 

Gender discrimination petition filed against Twitter

 

A former female employee has threatened Twitter by filing a gender discrimination lawsuit

The American-based social networking service, Twitter, has suffered from a huge setback as its reputation has been threatened by an allegation of gender discrimination. Twitter news today reported that one of the ex-female engineers of the social networking firm has filed a ‘gender bias’ petition against her former employer. In that petition, she has accused the social network for not providing equal promotion opportunities to women. The former female employee has also blamed them for developing and implementing gender-biased promotion policies that illegitimately favor men.

Tina Huang, employee in the mobile team and the developer manufacturing team of the company, petitioned a lawsuit this Thursday in the State Court of California,as informed by Twitter breaking news. Huang has stated that the promotion policies of the social networking service provider are responsible for ensuring the delay in promotion opportunities for women. In her petition, the former female engineer also stated that seniors did not promote her in 2013 without any justified reasoning despite her marvelous performance evaluations. The management of the corporation objected this accusation.

Twitter news further elaborated that Huang had also attempted to attain an out-of-court settlement, as she mailed the Chief Executive Officer of Twitter, Dick Costolo, last year mentioning her concerns. Several industry sources speculated her attempt to get justice failed as Huang was forced to resign from the social media firm after 90 days. This information was disagreed by Twitter itself. In her petition, Huang has also blamed the corporation for baseless hiring, as it has made sure that men occupy all the senior management positions. This accusation, if true, is sufficient to explain about the gender discriminatory policies of men. Huang also claims that the company has acknowledged its gender discrimination problem and initiated bias elimination training within it.

The findings of the diversity report of the microblogging firm tend to support the claims of the former employee of Twitter. Those results suggest that women occupy only one fifth of the senior management positions.  It is expected that the company might contest a legal battle against the claims of its employee as the social networking giant has rejected her allegations. Twitter is not the only social networking firm who has been accused of gender discrimination. Former employee of Facebook, another social media platform, had filed similar petition against it as well. Now, it is to be seen yet that to what extent this gender discrimination lawsuit would play its role in ensuring the provision of equal promotion opportunities to both men and women.

 

 

Meerkat – the upcoming buzz in live video streaming and its take on Twitter

For many of us who don’t know what actually Meerkat is, no, it isn’t the animal we are talking about but an app that has been making a buzz only within a few weeks of its launch. It has taken the App store already by storm by making its steady place.

Let us see what it actually does, many moments in the history have passed by which glued the viewers to televisions, JFK’s assassination, Martin Luther King’s moving speech or Michael Jackson’s death. From saddening moments to the emotional ones, there have been significant times when live streaming required the users to leave all the work they were doing and only keep their eyes on the televisions.

This maybe the inspiration for Meerkat, a live video streaming app launched on 27^th February 2015 by Ben Rubin. This app lets the users take video selfie or make a live video and share with their friends. Recently, twitter integrated Meerkat for the live video broadcast for their users. Anyone uploading a live video from Meerkat can see and reply to the comments in the form of tweets by any person who tweets to the video.

“Within a few minutes, 500 to 800 people are watching me live, at any given time,” says Vaynerchuck. “That is insanity, if you think about it . . . and don’t forget, I am a 39-year-old male who talks about business, so my demo isn’t the most native to this.

Buzzfeed was the first one to notice that Twitter has cut off the automatic access of Meerkat to Twitter’s social graph. What Buzzfeed was told regarding this is: “We are limiting their access to Twitter’s social graph, consistent with our internal policy. Their users will still be able to distribute videos on Twitter and log in with their Twitter credentials.”

Ben Rubin took on Twitter with tweeting regarding this, “twitter’s move here shows how significant meerkat has become.”

The app won’t be able to create friend maps instantly now so it would limit the users significantly. Fewer notifications will be received by the users of the videos being broadcasted at Meerkat by their friends and also will not get Meerkat notification for their friends joining Twitter. Either Meerkat needs to work on a new strategy for its users to find their friends on Meerkat without Twitter’s help or rely on the users’ constant and parallel usage of Twitter and Meerkat both.