Today, February 10, 2021, Creatopy Founder and CEO Gabriel Ciordas appeared on the BBC to discuss the 2020 Q4 and Fiscal Year Twitter Results.
With Trump’s recent removal from the platform, debates over freedom of speech, and a spotlight on Twitter’s slow growth, there is an interesting conversation to be held.
Twitter has had a number of challenges in recent years, and advertisers are now pickier than ever with where they spend their ad dollars. Gabriel believes that digital advertisers should spend their money where they are most likely to reach their target audience.
It’s Twitter’s opportunity to create a platform where advertisers can reach an engaged audience, as key opinion leaders use the platform as a real-time newswire to connect with their communities. It would be interesting to see Twitter further improve its ad format offering, attracting the attention of big advertisers and proving its value.
With a Democratic government now in play in the US, tech regulation is also expected to be firmly on the agenda, and Twitter will need to ensure that it is committed to creating a brand-safe environment in order to stay on the right side of the public and political opinion.
Trump had around 90 million followers, and so in the next quarter, we will likely see the real impact that his expulsion from the platform has had. We also know Twitter has a relatively small user-base compared with the other social platforms, but that doesn’t make it any less valuable—it just needs to improve its experience and reputation.
Gabriel noted that the decisions Twitter has made this year are allowing it to take control of the content on the platform. It will likely see the benefit of standing firm on extremist content by increasing trustworthiness among its users. Going forward with a new President now in place, we hope that they will convince the new president to use Twitter as much as the previous president.
Finally, we see big moves in the diversification of Twitter’s product offering towards content as well as a doubling down on its position as THE platform that democratizes information.
With Twitter’s recent acquisitions of newsletter platform Revue and social podcasting platform Breaker, as well as the launch of Birdwatch, it’s clear that Jack Dorsey is looking to evolve Twitter’s portfolio to provide more revenue streams for advertisers and to create a more exciting platform for daily usage.