Twitter reported zero new users in Q2 – What is wrong and What can be done?

Recently, Twitter reported zero user growth in Q2'17. It is a big area of concern in spite of the fact that Twitter is one of the most fascinating social networking products in current internet ecosystem.

To explain this further, I would like to share few thoughts on Twitter. Twitter can be briefly called as "Social Network of ideas". It is very difficult to explain twitter in words as it is quite a complex product. Twitter is my personal favorite and best among Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Snapchat and many other social media platforms. Twitter is helping users to identify news/ trends/ people of his interests, provide moments to connect with such people and connect/ communicate over ideas.  

Why will it happen that such a great product had zero product growth?

Problem lies in difficult on-boarding process with no user direction. Even if user is on-boarded, he is not able to identify what to do. Also - If user is dropped off once, there is no incentive for him to log back in. Probability for user to come back is low to negligible.

Twitter don’t have any defined user persona or user growth path. There is no clear business model, growth plan and scalability.

To improve user on-boarding, Product road-map can be changed in few ways:

1. Filtration of spam content in user feeds - Data cleansing need to happen to remove spam tweets in topics especially trending topics. Whenever user is looking for trending or any topic, it is cumbersome to identify the right set of information among spam users or tweets. Strong spam filter need to be present in twitter user feed.

2. Three level of user roadmap - Three simple ways can be adopted to help user to be part of twitter ecosystem and understand the way to use it in the right direction. Upside potential of twitter is immensely high and user will not be able to utilize unless he is comfortable using twitter. Here are the 3 steps:

• Once user is able to login - first screen should allow him/ her to select topics of his interest. Post selection, specific/ relevant feeds (old/ new) will appear to help him understand the twitter.
• Once user is able to find relevant information. Users should be informed about the ability to follow leaders/ key people of his interest, their routines. User can see these key people's feed - can understand what are they doing, whom are they following, what are they writing about. It is great way to understand role models and definitely, valuable asset for users.
• This is the most critical aspect to retain user. Once user is acquainted with topics/ leaders/ key people, he should be made aware the importance of unfollow and direct messaging. Power of unfollow needs to be realized by user.

Twitter is a great idea with immense potential to replace news/ media and become social platform of ideas and news.

Product usability needs to be improved significantly with defined user personas. For business model - Data is the biggest strength of twitter and can be huge incentive to drive customer interests so that branding/ advertising can be done accordingly. With advertisement industry slowing down, twitter has all the right tools available to bring that change.

We’ve not seen any significant change in twitter product for last couple of months. I hope – Bad Q2 will be taken as a reminder and an opportunity to bring a positive change here.