Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR)’s slowing user growth has been a cause for concern with analysts and experts lately. It is believed that users are spending less time on the microblogging site than they used to. Analysts are coming up with many theories for the slowing user growth of Twitter, but a report from Deutsche Bank released on 24 March, 2014 may just have hit the nail on the head.
Former users need help curating
Deutsche Bank surveyed 1100 people including current users, lapsed users, and people who never signed up for Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR). The survey found that the top three reasons given by people who have now stopped using Twitter indicate their inability to find and filter relevant information. According to Deutsche Bank analysts (Ross Sandler, Lloyd Walmsley, Deepak Mathivanan and Kevin LaBuz), this is more of a “curation” problem than related to content as Twitter is filled with information on many topics.
For Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR), the survey revealed encouraging news that 60% of former users are willing to give it another try. Top factors that motivated the users to re-join Twitter are better curation and filtering, and more friends have joined Twitter since then.
Better curation and filtering is an area where Twitter could offer more help by directing users to locate who to follow easily. Though Twitter is working to rectify the problem, and recently introduced “Discover” view for a similar purpose, the survey found that most of the users are not aware of any such services.
Facebook should inspire Twitter
For current Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) users, the survey found that almost 50% of the active users use the service more than once a day, which is close to Facebook’s 60% DAU/MAU. However, a majority of users spend fewer than five minutes on the platform during each visit. Active users stated that reading news event and finding interesting content are the most common activity.
From the non-users, the survey found that 30% of them are willing to use Twitter while 45% of the non-users stated that they are not sure how Twitter will be useful for them.
Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) has been facing some rough times since the IPO. The stock is down 24% year to date, and is expected to fall further, when the first major “lock-up” period expires, in May. After the expiration, some 475 million shares held by employees will be available for sale.
Twitter could use some inspiration from Facebook, which went through even more struggles after its IPO in 2012. At that time, there were concerns raised about the inability of the social networker to tap the mobile platform. Two years later, Facebook has proved all the critiques wrong. LinkedIn also faced similar issues after its IPO, but it managed to come out relatively unscathed.
