Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) is rolling out new features while no such roll out appears to be in the works to grow revenue past Wall Street’s expectations.
Twitter move comes amid investor disappointment
Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR)’s lack of clear path to aggressive revenue growth has disappointed, as its shares are dropped 10% March 30 after earnings were announced.
The coming apps to be seen on Twitter will provide users the ability to easily ignore people they nonetheless follow in addition to allowing private group conversations.
Muting: the polite unfollow
One new Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) feature will allow users to “mute” people they follow. In “muting” someone that person is no longer visible in the user’s content time line. In other words, this is a polite method of unfollowing someone without the sting of actually un-following them. “This way, though, if someone is going on a brief emotional rampage, you can quietly turn them off, wait until they’ve tired themselves out, and then turn them back on without the offending tweeter being any the wiser,” a Gizmodo report notes.
The muting feature is available on certain content types, including keywords and hashtags in the Twitter-acquired desktop app, Tweetdeck. Until now, however, it’s been virtually impossible to do the same with mobile or browser version of Twitter.
Private group conversations
Another feature could enable users to engage in private group conversations. Currently private conversations on Twitter are only accessible on an individual, one-on-one basis.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) CEO Dick Costolo says the company is adding the feature that will move more into messaging with a feature that will allow for more selective mass communication.
“There are frequently public conversations that you would like to grab hold of and take into ‘whisper mode’ with a friend and say, ‘Hey, this thing has happened,” he said in the Bloomberg interview. “Being able to move fluidly between that public conversation and the private conversation is something we’ll make (Twitter usage) simpler.”
The challenge for Twitter Inc (NYSE:TWTR) has been to become “mainstream” and branch out from a tool extensively used by the media and technical and financial elite.
