Twitter is really, is seems at times, two companies. If you’re watching the news or television in any manner you still see hashtags all over the place and requests for tweets, but behind that you have a company that has seen user growth nearly come to a standstill with user engagement also down.
Twitter looks at options to retain, regain relevance
The micro-blogging site saw early gains in trading today when the company announced that it would be looking at changing its 140 character count and limit. These gains have been given back at 10:55 AM EDT with the stock trading exactly where it close yesterday and is trading about $0.30 above its all time low at $14.29.
To put that further into perspective, in the last 52-weeks the stock has traded as high as $38.82.
It’s believed that the company is now seriously looking at making changes to the character limit that made Twitter what it is and forced people to communicate differently. It appears nothing is sacred and Chief Executive Officer Jack Dorsey seems willing to change anything to get the company back on its feet and generating revenue.
“We’re not going to be shy about building more utility and power into Twitter for people,” said Dorsey on Twitter early this year. “As long as it’s consistent with what people want to do, we’re going to explore it.”
Bloomberg reported yesterday that the company will stop counting characters and links against the iconic 140-character limit for public tweets. While Twitter automatically shortens links, they still take 23 characters or 17% of the limit. Bloomberg is expecting these changes to be rolled-out in the next two weeks. Twitter has, thus far, remained silent on the report but did announce that BET CEO Debra Lee would be joining the board today.
Twitter needs to do something
It’s been reported that Twitter has explored plans to raised the character count to has high as 10,000 characters, but in so doing would essentially lose all that Twitter built with its very limited character count, but the company is clearly in adapt and survive mode at present.
It appears that after 10 years, the company is going to change nothing short of its very foundation.
The company has been shifting its focus a bit and hopes that video might be its salvation. The company paid the NFL $10 million earlier this year in order to stream 10 Thursday night games when they begin next season and the company appears poised to continue this trend and is believed to be looking into additional video content in the entertainment, politics and sports arenas.
