The biggest challenge of Twitter is indifference

The speech of Twitter aimed at people like Christine Harsono is not taking place in the white. The popularity of Twitter has not succeeded in persuading this waitress for 21 years in the Los Angeles area for you to register. Harsono, which is a user of Facebook since 2008, said that there is no reason for tweets, even when the favorite TV show, “The Voice” encourages her to join the conversation on the microblogging service.

For news and gossip about celebrities, are television and YouTube. “I feel that I have a place to see all these things. Really don’t see a need for Twitter”, she explains. Harsono represents the biggest challenge of enterprise microblogging, which became evident last week when she reported a decline in the growth of the number of users.

Today, Twitter is almost indispensable in any advertising campaign and is omnipresent in the media. However, despite the fact that it has flooded the web, television and billboards with their hashtags inviting people to join the social network, in the United States four of every five people with Internet connection is not yet normally use it. Facebook, in comparison, covers more than half of Internet users in USA and more than five times the amount of Twitter users around the world.

Few days ago, Twitter lost nearly a quarter of its market capitalization due to the decline of its action, which raises a crucial question for its advertising business: can the company take care of the problem that has to reach the ordinary users?

Twitter continues to double its revenue every quarter and has found ways to get more profitability per user. In addition, some with non-commercial accounts are obsessive tweeters. Rich LaPointe said that he had sent almost 9,000 tweets since he joined the social network in 2010. “I feel connected to a channel of information that many people look over or ignored”, says the architect of 43 years. Twitter is also making plans to generate revenue outside its traditional service by selling ads on other sites.

Anyway, the main business depends on the scale. The greater amount of users uses the network, the greater audience of potential targets for advertisers. The growth also influences much in the market value of Twitter, which is still located in the high figure of US$30,000 million.

The problem of reaching the ordinary users has irritated the executives. At the beginning of 2013, predicted that they would have 400 million active users per month by the end of the year, according to two sources at both. However, Twitter reported 241 million active users, after adding only one million in the USA and eight million in the rest of the countries in the fourth quarter.

If it’s quarterly growth to stabilize at 3.9%, it would take about 11 years to reach the 1,230 million current users of Facebook.

The problem of reaching the ordinary users has irritated the executives. At the beginning of 2013, predicted that they would have 400 million active users per month by the end of the year, according to two sources at both. However, Twitter reported 241 million active users, after adding only one million in the USA and eight million in the rest of the countries in the fourth quarter.

The Executive President, Dick Costolo, who has said that the purpose of Twitter is to “reach all the people on the planet”, says that an improvement in functionality can accelerate the growth of users. In response to questions from analysts last week, he emphasized the need to facilitate the registration process and ensure that new users acquainted it with network “very fast”. Costoli added that the site is creating functions to highlight the talks and sending messages, which already proved to be popular on Facebook.

Some observers believe that the company faces fundamental psychological problems. It is not a problem for younger people, who grew up texting, not a drawback. But for older people, this limit clashes with their “natural mode of communication”, says Dhiraj Murthy, professor of sociology at the University of London.

The biggest problem may be the little close relationships. Unlike Facebook and LinkedIn Corp., the social network of professional contacts, connections on Twitter are often to known, unknown and funny celebrities. “Obviously we may not know very well at all on Facebook, but in general you usually have stronger relationships there with the people you follow on Twitter”, says Murthy, author of Twitter: Social Communication in the Twitter Age (something like Twitter: Social Communication in the age of Twitter).

The weak links can discourage the tweet between users with few followers. “I feel there is a lot of noise on Twitter”, says Jaime Richter, a publisher of video of 34 who has an account from a few years ago, but he takes months of disuse. According Twopcharts, a site that monitors Twitter accounts, there are nearly one billion registered accounts, but an unknown quantity is spam that has been removed.

Twitter has begun to take steps so that the service to better connects with ordinary users. For example, it allows direct messages stand out more and has begun to allow images in the main feed. These changes have increased the activity. Costoli said that several initiatives planned for this year will shift “the inclination of the curve of growth”, although he gave no details.