@Twitter #Lite - with a twee"s"t

Last week Twitter launched the Lite that is a less data-intensive version of its service for the emerging markets where internet connections can be patchy. The firm has been struggling to acquire new user base and the Twitter Lite seems to be an excellent way to achieve growth. The service can be accessed via a mobile web browser like Google Chrome and takes up less than 1 megabyte on the device. Twitter has optimized it for speed to give it a 30 percent faster launch time than the standard app and quicker navigation. To learn the motivation behind this app, we will first have to understand what Twitter is and how it exactly works concerning business.

Twitter is a micro-blogging and news update service that allows the users to share content, typically called "tweets" restricted to 140 characters. Tweeples can share media like images, videos, GIFs and links as tweets. So what's new in this?! Twitter in terms in of business is a classic example of a platform. A platform is something that attracts two different sets of users to fulfill their needs. For instance, eBay; there is a set of users that are looking forward to buying something, and on the other hand, there is a set of users who are trying to sell items. eBay acts as commonplace or rather platform that enables to they seller to sell the product to the buyer in a secured fashion. Similarly, in the case of Twitter, one set of users (let's call them Tweet consumers) is interested in reading updates and news, and the other group of users (Tweet creators) will create these small chunks of information to share. In most of the cases, tweet creators and consumers are reversible, which means tweeple create and consume tweets.

So the question is how does Twitter make money?

There is another group of users that is a subset of tweet creators called advertisers that publish and promote their brands on Twitter. This set of users can be famous global brands like Apple, Nike, or P&G, and much more or even a small mom-and-pop store that is trying to promote itself in the local market.

Twitter brings an unbelievable amount of insights of their followers that can help these advertisers to target very specific audience. The above image shows the type of acumens the brand can access from this platform. These brands can use the accurate information to create objective-based campaigns like increasing website visits, followers or awareness by reaching the right audience. Besides, these brands can also analyze their advertising performance.

With all these great features as of April 2017, Twitter has been able to acquire 101 million DAU (Daily Active Users) and 319 million MAU (Monthly Active Users) which is comparatively way lower than other social media giants. Approximately 500 million tweets are created every day, and 80% of tweeple access Twitter on mobile (in addition to other devices).

The advertising revenue has been close to $550 million out of which 88% comes from mobile advertising. Twitter got listed on NYSE in November 2013 and gained some high traction in the earlier days. However, since then, it has been a declining story. Since 2016, the stock price has been sub $20. Twitter being a platform, the threat of being enveloped by the giant vultures in the market is common, and these rumors have been floating around since October 2016.

So let's see how Twitter is trying to open the doors to a radically new world.

If the video does not open do watch it over here

So why Twitter made the Lite version? Well, there are several barriers to using Twitter in the developing countries as mentioned below. 

• Slow mobile networks (45% of global mobile connection are still on slower 2G networks)
• Flaky internet connections
• Expensive data plans
• Lack of storage on mobile devices

To overcome these problems, Twitter used blue ocean strategy, the bottom of the pyramid philosophy and frugal innovation to design and execute the Lite. Blue ocean strategy helps a firm to compete in an uncontested market by changing the rules of the games. It helps the business to achieve differentiation and low-cost simultaneously. In the bottom of the pyramid philosophy, the company targets the lowest but the biggest chunk of the socio-economic group. This group is improving and moving towards the next section of the pyramid. In frugal innovation, an organization develops and manufactures products with minimum possible resources. It also reduces the unrequired features or the parts that their target audience will not value. If you have watched the video above, this is the exact thing that Twitter did to come up with Lite.

The advantages or features of Twitter Lite that will make Twitter more accessible to millions of tweeple are

• New mobile web experience
• Minimize data usage, load quickly on slower connections
• Resilient on unreliable mobile networks
• Takes less than 1MB on the device
• Optimize for speed, quicker navigation
• Data saver mode reduces the amount of mobile data used

To understand how Twitter made the Lite version, we will have to look at the Value Net (figure below) of Twitter. Value Net explains the relationships between customers, suppliers, substitutes, and complementary firms of an organization. A classic example of a platform, which companies do to avoid a threat of envelopment is to find a big brother. Twitter partnered with Google to develop Twitter Lite using Google's PWA (Progressive Web App) technology that leverages the lightweight Google Chrome and can help achieve native features notifications, shortcut on home screen, offline mode and all. Another reason of partnering with Google probably would be Android OS phones have a huge market share in the developing economies. Thus, it would be really easy to distribute this lighter app.

Future of Twitter?

The blue dot in the below image denotes where Twitter stands today! With the launch of Twitter Lite especially targeting huge populations of developing nations of African and Asian continents, we will have to monitor to see if Twitter will follow the red trail or really take a high jump and move in the green direction. (The graph is only for illustrative purposes and I don't do any predictions)

I guess time is the answer!

References used:

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any company/agency. Examples of analysis performed within this article are only examples. They should not be utilized in real-world analytic products as they are based only on very limited and dated open source information. Assumptions made within the analysis are not reflective of the position of any entity.

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