Twitter: 10 years on, still lagging behind

What can you say in 140 characters? What can't you say in 140 characters? This is what Twitter taught the world - to say what you want clearly and concisely.

Twitter is a social network that helps people to send and read 'tweets' or 140-character messages in real time in a multitude of languages. For this reason, it is also called a 'micro blogging' site. Pictures, video and audio clips and web links can be included in these messages. Twitter has a proprietary system to shorten weblinks to fit into the 140-character limit.

However, due to intense competition from Facebook, Facebook Messenger and What's App (also owned by Facebook) on the social network front, Twitter is now classified as a News App on the Apple iOS App Store. Twitter was at one time very close to being bought by Facebook, but the deal fell through and is unlikely to happen again.

Twenty-five offices

Twitter was founded on March 21, 2006 in San Francisco, USA. Today, Twitter has around 25 offices around the world and celebrated its 10th anniversary recently. The founders are Jack Dorsey (the present CEO), Biz Stone, Evan Williams and Noah Glass. Their inspiration was the phone-based Short Messaging Service (SMS) which is normally limited to 160 characters per message. Unlike Apple's iMessage, Twitter is not a direct replacement of SMS.

Dorsey said of the hunt for a name for their service: "We came across the word 'twitter', and it was just perfect. The definition was 'a short burst of inconsequential information,' and 'chirps from birds'. And that's exactly what the product was". Indeed, Twitter's symbol is a chirpy bird in flight without the word Twitter. Twitter can be accessed worldwide, except in Iran, China and North Korea where the site is banned. On Twitter, you can 'Follow' someone or an organisation.

'Followers'

If you tweet, over time you will gather 'Followers' who will automatically get your tweets. The Twitter name that you use is sometimes called the Twitter handle - for example, @twitter. Celebrities who tweet are sometimes called Twitterati and the Twitter ecosystem - Twittersphere.

If you want to check on tweets on a particular subject, such as the Rio Olympics, you can look for the 'hash tag' #RioOlympics. Twitter brings people across the world together during significant cultural or sporting events such as the Soccer World Cup or a Game of Thrones episode.

When underdog team Leicester City were crowned English Premier League champions last week, Twitter virtually 'exploded' with over 5.5 million tweets in a few minutes, an increase of 86 percent over the normal rate of tweets.

The person with the largest number of followers is Katy Parry, with 84 million. Justin Bieber is second with 76 million followers and Taylor Swift has 72 million. The highest-ranking non-entertainer is US President barrack Obama, who has 70 million. (Most world leaders have an official Twitter account). Interestingly, Google's YouTube Twitter account has attracted more than 60 million followers. Ironically, Facebook, Twitter's arch-rival, also has an official Twitter account, as does Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg.

Number 10

Although Twitter has over 500 million user accounts, only around 330 million are active users who send around 140 million Twitter messages a day. This is way behind the main competitor Facebook's 1.6 billion active user base. Anyone aged 13 and above can join Twitter free. Twitter is ranked number 10 on the Alexa list of the most visited websites in the world, which is headed by Google and Facebook.

For many users, Twitter is more about reading what other people have to say and watching what other people do than about participating themselves. According to research published in April 2014, around 44 percent of users never tweeted an original tweet even once. (Note that you can also share others' tweets without tweeting yourself).

Twitter primarily depends on advertising (called promoted tweets) for its revenue. Recently, Twitter badly missed its first-quarter revenue estimates, attributing the shortfall to big-brand advertisers not increasing their spending as quickly as expected. Twitter earned around US$ 2 billion last year and the net income was around US$ 520 million.

Twitter's revenue growth is expected to shrink to 17 percent this quarter after doubling only 18 months ago. This appears to be due to Twitter's signature advertising product: the 'promoted tweet', which looks like a regular tweet but includes promotional text, images and links. Brands are moving away from these ads because they are looking for more immersive advertising such as video or interactive ads, says Executive Director of a social-media agency, James Douglas. Twitter also launched video ads last year that start rolling while muted, Facebook-style, as users scroll through their timelines. Advertisers are waiting for Twitter to roll out improved tools to target users and measure performance. Twitter hopes to release these tools later in the year, around the time it will begin live-streaming the first of 10 National Football League (NFL) games which it won after beating Amazon and Hulu.

Twitter also gained the live streaming service Periscope to compete with Facebook Live. Twitter also has its own short video service called Vine and photo sharing service called Twitpic. Twitter has been releasing a slew of changes and new products, such as a big change to its timeline and new real-time services such as Moments.

Twitter is also trying to make the service less confusing and more palatable to new users. Some companies use so-called chatbots (also called tweetbots) on Twitter for repetitive messaging. Microsoft recently unleashed on Twitter a so-called 'millennial chatbot' called Tay that was supposed to mimic the behaviour of a teenage girl, but users quickly taught it to spew out racist and offensive remarks. Microsoft had to take it down.

Twitter recently dropped a plan to remove the 140 character limit after a severe backlash. Most people now access Twitter via smartphone apps (iOS, Android, Windows and Amazon Fire OS) rather than on laptops or desktops. Twitters smartphone apps are termed an 'essential' item by the App Store editors.

Twitter rolled out a new featured Connect Tab last week which helps users to find accounts they would like to follow. The Connect Tab will pull together and follow recommendations based on where you are located, who you already follow, and major events on Twitter. The new tab, on iOS and Android, is similar to a previous 'Find People' tab that was in the same space. Twitter also redesigned its mobile website recently to attract more mobile web (not app) traffic from people who do not have the app.

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