This Week’s Top Stories
The Reason Twitter’s Losing Active Users
(Harvard Business Review, 2/12/16)
PNConnect Insight – In all the discussion about Twitter’s stagnant growth and desperate introduction of new features, few have been willing to tackle one very significant factor — the idea that the problem with Twitter (or any social network) is not the platform itself, but rather a user base that doesn’t contribute much that’s worth sticking around for. The author correctly points out that a significant portion of the “conversation” on Twitter is lowest common denominator — or worse, the kind of harassment and bullying that the author calls “a low-level hum of emotional violence.”
We work under the assumption that democratizing communication and giving everyone a vehicle to publish are good things; but it’s possible that giving everyone a platform just amplifies the voices of those with nothing valuable to say. This piece calls out this problem specifically on Twitter, but it applies to other networks too, and it’s a growing challenge. Brands can react by producing positive, relevant content that resonates with their target audiences, rather than trying too hard to be part of existing yet superfluous conversations (e.g. so-called “real-time” marketing).
Read the rest of the stories on the PNConnect blog.