What if 140 characters is all that Twitter will ever be?

There’s something strange going on in Twitter at the moment. The site continues to go from strength to strength in terms of users and tweets sent and the interest in Twitter as a platform remains high as it benefits from celebrity endorsement and integration with news media. Yet it seems that everyone is into Twitter, except the Twitter team themselves. It seems the direction of the business is in contention, shown most recently with their decision to work openly with developers, in contrast to the line they took with external development earlier this year. The focus of the original team is now split into new ventures, suggesting they might have given up on the idea of Twitter making any serious money. The question is, can it survive simply as a platform for sharing updates, without the backing and interest of the original Twitter team?

Launching a new project

The team behind Twitter have just announced the launch of a new project, that is not a launch for Twitter itself, but rather ‘Obvious Corporation’ – which is the company formed by Jack, Evan and Biz to originally launch Twitter and a number of other startups. The company was restarted by Evan and Biz earlier this year when they departed Twitter full time.The new project ‘Lift’ is fairly shrouded in mystery at the moment, as there’s little to give away what the app actually does, other than ‘unlocking human potential’. Tellingly, Biz Stone wrote a blog post to announce the launch and said “It’s important never to delude ourselves into thinking that technology changes the world. People are responsible for change-technology just helps out.” This could be seen as a hint that while Twitter is a platform, it is the people that use it that keep it going, beyond what Twitter as an organisation can facilitate. I.e. we’ve provided the technology, now do what you want with it!

What the launch of Lift does show beyond doubt, is that the focus of the three founders is not entirely on Twitter. Launching a new product, app or service is not something you go into lightly and no matter how much experience is shared between the three of them, if Lift is to really take off, it will need their daily attention and focus. So what happens to Twitter in the meantime if they’re launching new products entirely separate to the site?

Jack’s return

What’s even more interesting is when you look at the context around the launch of Twitter. Jack Dorsey originally gave up his full time role in Twitter to focus on other, arguably more lucrative ventures, including Square which has proved hugely successful in its early days. It seemed that Jack was keen to invest time and money in something that had a direct route to payment, avoiding the difficulties that Twitter had faced. In March this year however, Jack returned full time to Twitter, moving from Chairman to Executive Chairman and taking the lead on product development. At the time this was seen as a positive move for Twitter.  Yet Jack’s Twitter bio reveals a lot in that he discloses himself as a founder of both Twitter and Square. Having seen the huge growth potential at Square, it’s difficult to see how Twitter will get the attention that’s needed, particular with Ev and Biz’s departure to Obvious Corporation.

What if 140 characters is it?

The fact is that you can’t question Twitter’s functionality as a service to share short updates with people. It is the social network that I value the most, that I spend most time on and that I really couldn’t live without. Yet when I think of how I use Twitter, it’s hard to see how it’s any different today than when I first started using it. Okay, there have been a few changes such as being able to retweet easily, suggested users etc.. But I’ve been using Tweetdeck for the past few years, I still use it every day and the way in which I use the Twitter site itself has barely changed at all. Compare this with Facebook, where the site is a million miles away from what it was three years ago for example, both as a business and a platform.

That’s not to say it’s a bad thing, or that I actually want it to change. As a marketer I wish they would sort out advertising, but as a user the site is pretty much perfect. At least until they started making changes to things like search, which has now rendered it pretty useless as a reliable search engine. Other than this, there’s not really anything I would like to change about the site as it does everything I want it to, in a simple way. That’s because it’s the content on there that keeps it going and it’s available in the exact format that turned me onto the site in the first place – quick and easy to digest. So what if this is actually all that Twitter will ever be? A simple platform to share a short update?

It differs from Facebook in this respect because Facebook has always been about connections – ways in which you find people, discover content, keep up to date with friends and events, and explore groups/Pages of different interest. Twitter has never been about these things. It has always been about getting and sharing the best information as quickly and easily as possible. The potential therefore, for Twitter to change this in a way that doesn’t impinge on what the service was originally meant to offer, is limited. Anything they introduce that distracts from the little white box to share your update could end up putting people off, and this isn’t a mistake they can afford to make. They can of course, allow developers to make this mistake, as another benefit to Twitter is what can be done outside of the platform itself, through external apps. These are largely gimmicky apps, with a few notable exceptions, whose value might be attractive but ulimately shortlived. If Twitter were to bring these experiences into the site itself, it could be disastrous. Therefore, perhaps they’ve decided that 140 characters is as far as it can ever go, so they’re moving onto new things.

Now they want PR

Now it’s not as if Twitter is exactly going backwards as a company, as they have just opened up shop in New York, showing their desire to spread outside of Silicon Valley. Along with this move however, they have begun looking for a PR agency, for the very first time. According to AdAge, they are talking to PR firms in New York as they seek to establish a long term relationship with an agency. But they have never had a permanent PR firm before. As the article suggests, PR up until this point has focused largely on the 3 founders themselves. But with Ev and Biz now focused on Obvious Corporation and Jack keenly involved in other areas such as Square, it seems that a PR strategy is needed that takes emphasis away from the 3 founders and more on the company as a whole.

A move such as this could be seen as preparation for the fact that ultimately, Jack, Ev and Biz are going to move onto other things and become more removed from the growth of Twitter as a company. It will be interesting to see how this pans out, as I genuinely believe that even without the focus of the 3 founders, Twitter won’t be going anywhere soon. But just how it will grow as an organisation is in contention and the potential for forward growth at the moment, looks questionable.