Twitter: Which Way Forward?

What’s the Latest Development?

Twitter may be fending off multi-billion dollar acquisition offers but it seems to be in turmoil. A recent Fortune magazine feature depicts a company being pulled in different directions. “What is missing from this picture? A consistent and tangible vision for what Twitter is, and what it wants to become. …It sounds a lot like Apple. More than almost any other company in recent memory, the iconic computer-maker-turned-consumer-appliance company has a compelling vision of what it stands for—and it doesn’t really have anything to do with a specific product.”

What’s the Big Idea?

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg didn’t want to try to monetize the network before it had a chance to grow—before he and the company could figure out what it was. “That was part of his vision. Twitter doesn’t have that luxury any longer: it has to figure all that out soon, and in-fighting over who gets credit for what, or who the board has confidence in, is not helping. But more than anything, the company needs to find that consistent vision and make it obvious.” Mathew Ingram says that what Twitter needs more than anything is compelling features it can add to the existing experience (and hopefully make money from). “There still isn’t anything approaching a useful Twitter search function, which is a fairly gaping hole for a social information service to have.”