Twitter Isn't Pivoting, It's Already A Media Company

If you read Dalton Caldwell’s blog post titled, Twitter is pivoting, you may find yourself nodding in agreement, but are they really pivoting, or just focusing solely on building what is already a core part of their business? If you ask me, I think it’s the latter.

Caldwell asserts that the “future Twitter” will be a media company that writes software optimized for passive users, I say that’s already the case anyway, and it has been for quite some time. If you remember back in September of last year, Twitter announced that it hit the 100 million user mark, and noted that of those users, 40 million of them were passive users, meaning they don’t create tweets. Twitter is already working to optimize the service for these users, just look at the recent feature implementation allowing people to share tweets via email.

He also says, “In this paradigm, Twitter’s business model is to help brands “amplify their reach”. A brand participating in Twitter can certainly distribute their content for free and get free organic traffic, but if they want to increase their reach, they need to pay.” The thing is, that’s exactly what Twitter’s business model has been for quite some time.

In fact, just this past September, Dick Costolo, told CNBC that Twitter is opening offices in London and Tokyo in an effort to expand its international advertising offerings. In addition to that, Costolo mentioned that user analytics are coming in the near future. A feature that will surely help brands and content creators bolster their engagement and improve their content offerings to their followers. These types of tools are exactly what a media company would provide to their clients in order to get them to buy more advertising, or in Twitter’s case, promoted tweets and trends.

And the reason for all of this is because of the fact people already use Twitter as a source for news and information, Twitter isn’t pivoting to make that the case — it already is the case. Of course, there will be people who continue to use Twitter as a communications tool, but by-in-large, most people today use Twitter to share and/or consume news and information.

Twitter isn’t pivoting now, if anything, Twitter pivoted over a year ago. Right now, they are focusing on building that core advertising business which is definitely built around media, entertainment, and other brands.