Why Twitter Will Either Build A Web Client Or Buy Tweetdeck
There is no doubt that Twitter is one of the most powerful tools on the web today (well apart from the last couple of days when it has been horrendous and down all the time). I use it for work for everything from talking to customers to monitoring what is being said about the brands and businesses we represent. In my social time it has replaced my need for Google Reader as the main place where I find great content and it enhances my TV viewing experience and provides insight in to sporting events that I would not normally have at the tips of my fingers. Increasingly Twitter is becoming a fundamental part of many of our lives. A lot of my interaction with Twitter doesn’t take place through Twitter itself though and I think that we could be about to see Twitter start to take some control back, here is why…
Twitter Web Experience Can Never Compete
The Twitter website is not bad. It does the basics and there is no doubt that Twitter are making improvements to make it better (I wouldn’t be surprised if the current downtime was all about a massive new update and improvement to the site) but there is only so far you can go with Twitter.com. The real power of Twitter lies in the clients that have been developed for it and when I say clients I really only mean Tweetdeck and Seesmic.As you can see with the graph below the growth of the Twitter website itself has never been spectacular anyway and it has always been the clients that have seen such stellar growth.
Developers Can Be Annexed
There was a it of a hullabaloo when Twitter announced that it would be entering the iPhone and Android client market but to be honest that was pretty much confined to developers who felt that they had been marginalized. As Twitter has grown in to the mainstream the general public actually have no idea what a client is or who actually builds them. They just want the best user experience possible. There would certainly be a huge uproar for a couple of weeks on all the tech blogs around the world but Twitter hold all the aces now and they might decide that it is in their interests to won the client market.
Grabbing Market Share And Revenue Streams
I am at the stage where I would probably pay a small fee for Tweetdeck if I was asked to. I know I am a power user and need it for work but I think there are a lot of businesses and individuals who could not live without their Twitter client. Twitter could build a pro version of their client (something similar to Tweetdeck) and add in additional functionality that would appeal to brands and businesses. Imagine if I could access the stats for people viewing my profile or the geographical breakdown of where my followers came from. That is the short of information that makes Facebook so valuable and I think that Twitter will need to start doing the same with some sort of power dashboard for brands.
Twitter Starting To Own The Mobile Apps
Up until recently the Twitter experience on mobile was all about what other 3rd party developers would offer you. The experience and usability was nothing to do with twitter at all. Twitter changed that by either launching their own apps or acquiring others so as they now have their own apps for iPhone, Blackberry and Android. The main reason that they gave for this move was that they wanted to control the Twitter experience and keep the quality levels up. In truth I think they realized that they were missing out on a key part of the chain and they were starting to get marginalized themselves by providing all this brilliant information where so many others were getting the value of that information but not Twitter themselves.
Will They Do It?
A large part of the success of Twitter has been down to the developers around the company who have helped grow it in to the monster that it is today. Business is however not a sentimental game and we have already seen that Twitter had no problem coming in and taking their ball back from the other kids for their mobile apps. Coming in to the web client space would be sure to annoy even more developers and push some of them away but Twitter might just see it as a calculated risk that is worth taking. They might also look to take the route of buying somebody and I really see huge potential in them acquiring Tweetdeck. As I said before I don’t think Tweetdeck is far away from being something that brands and businesses would pay for and with some additional functionality and some Twitter Pro branding you could just have a huge new revenue stream for Twitter. I personally think that they have to take this calculated risk. The real power of Twitter does not lie in the website but in 3rd party apps and I think to unlock the real potential of Twitter and their own monetization they need to control the complete package from mobile to web to clients.This is the only place where they don’t currently have a presence so I would say expect to see them here very soon.
Comments