Twitter is called a microblog for its real-time social activity on its pages. Five hundred million social network fans visit the resource daily, making it an effective marketing platform for business and brand promotion. Besides the promotion of the brand, businessmen use the platform the search for operative information, research competitors, and for finding out the topical news of the current day. Taking into consideration the number of users of this social network, a particular brand can use the site to search for working staff and collaborations with other brands to exchange the audience. First of all, businesses are interested in the possibility of advertising their services through a large number of hashtags. Because of the site’s limitation of characters in a single post, a brand needs to put its offer in a few lines briefly and succinctly. It may seem like a minus, but the generation of millennials, who are the key audience of Twitter, are much more willing to accept short information than texts with a large number of characters.
One can make “promotional tweets” for advertising, which will have a unique marker on which only interested users will stop. In addition, the label “promotional tweet” itself as if it were an indication of honesty to customers. After all, the brand could use the technique of “clickbait,” thereby taking time from the reader of the post, which can cause an adverse reaction on his part. In order to help develop an account for a business, Twitter offers a Promoted account service. The competent development of the report, which has the edge between seriousness with a drop of humor, will be more attractive than accounts with dry information about goods or services provided by the brand (Al Amri, 2020). In addition, such an account will always be on the ear because people will share funny posts, tweeting them, thus sharing the account with their subscribers. The site has a large number of tools for doing business.
Despite the number of advantages of using the site for business, of course, it has its disadvantages. First of all, it is the start of the development of the brand, which requires a considerable investment of money and effort, search staff who will deal with SEO branding and analytics of attendance. The first time the company’s posts can get lost in the millions of others, even using the same hashtags. Then you can include huge competition in the problem because large companies have long had their accounts, audience, and reach. In addition to the competition, one shouldn’t forget that Twitter is an online platform that sometimes crashes. Crashes in Twitter’s servers, and bugs in the code, can reduce the number of followers or the same audience coverage. At the same time, some companies use unfair promotion methods, using bots or clickbait headlines. Bots can be used on account of their competitors, and then they can complain to technical support to have their account removed.
Social media has taken a crucial role in our lives. Through them, we communicate with our loved ones, find out news about the world, and watch entertainment content. We can say that they have become a modern television in which a person spends most of his free time. With this in mind, mass culture has moved smoothly into social media, including Twitter (Al Amri, 2020). On the platform, everyone can find accounts, news, and entertainment content to their liking, from serious news to humor, science pop, and other entertaining, educational resources.
It is no wonder that since time appeared, accounts of famous personalities such as Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and other prominent businessmen, who, in addition to their businesses, share their impressions on certain events. Famous people use Twitter not only for their promotion but also as a platform for scandalous statements. For this reason, the concept of “Cancellation Culture” first appeared, followed by the term “Black Twitter”.
The culture of cancellation is a boycott of a specific person or company. For example, we can remember how Donald Trump’s account was banned and who repeatedly used Twitter to make scandalous statements about controversial topics. The account of the former U.S. president was banned three days after his constituents stormed the Capitol. This whole situation perfectly describes how one person’s statement on a social platform can affect the decision of a mass of people. Moreover, a case in point is the story of Disney and actress Gina Karana, who played the Mandalorian series. The reason for breaking the contract was unflattering posts of the actress on Twitter regarding wearing masks and the U.S. presidential election.
In addition to statements by famous personalities, less popular people can create their own movement and publicize it to the whole site. For example, the hashtag #MeToo was launched in 2017 by victims of sexual harassment by film director Harvey Weinstein. Actresses, camera crew members, assistants, and other personnel who were somehow harmed by the director’s actions gave the cases massive publicity. As a consequence, Harvey Weinstein was sentenced to 23 years in prison, deprived of all awards from the film academies in general, and the cancellation of the director as a creative unit. The hashtag itself is used to this day, in which women and men can share their painful experiences, get support from others and call to account people who have either abused them. Twitter and other social platforms have long influenced the culture and opinions of the masses, politics, and companies.
As of December 3, 2021, Twitter is undergoing radical changes, namely a change in the company’s leadership. The new CEO is Parag Agrawal, who, with his arrival, announced a complete overhaul of the company’s organization. At the heart of the reorganization is the transition to a management model of the general manager, who will allow more precise and faster parsing of work processes and will lead all major teams involved in the development, product management, design, and research. The new executive’s goals are to overhaul the company’s consumer division. Consequently, Twitter is expecting changes in advertising algorithms and price increases for business rates, which the users of the site itself will directly evaluate. Most likely, the first-time changes in organizational moments will be subjected to criticism from users. Any radical changes, which will obviously be present, cause an adverse reaction because people are used to the old algorithms (Al Amri, 2020). Later, people will get used to the new solutions, begin to see their usefulness and convenience, and literally, all the old complaints will disappear in a year.
In 2022, Twitter’s management changed the staffing arrangements again. This time they replaced general managers Kayvon Bakepour and Bruce Falk, who were responsible for the consumption and revenue division. Apparently, the CEOs were not happy with the company’s profitability and the drop in subscribers’ reach. At the same time, Twitter created a problem for Elon Musk, who criticized the management’s decision to delete Donald Trump’s account. In his opinion, by such actions, the site limits people’s freedom of speech, and if even public people can be blocked, then what to say about ordinary users? Against the backdrop of such statements, Twitter began to lose its audience, with some proclaiming the “death of Twitter” as a social network (Al Amri, 2020). Twitter’s business of late is challenging to call optimistic, but perhaps a change in the CEO can change the situation.
Twitter, like any social network, is certainly not perfect and has a vast amount of disadvantages. This paper has already raised questions about bot scamming and the culture of cancellation, which in the wrong hands, can limit freedom of speech or remove it altogether as such from the site. Moreover, the stability of the servers leaves much to be desired. Only for 2022 have already been about a dozen cases of server shutdowns due to errors. Despite management and team changes in 2021 and 2022, the social network is still losing audience reach. Coverage returned for a time when SpaceX founder Elon Musk announced plans to buy the social network and extensively reorganize the company. He especially emphasized changes to the free speech policy. The deal failed because of military conflicts around the world, including Ukraine’s war against Russia.
Consequently, Twitter could return to the lead among social networks by changing censorship so that everyone has the right to express their opinions. Of course, sometimes it’s controversial, but that’s what liberal values are built on changes in the organization of work processes. The method of ‘general manager’ is effective when there is such a manager in each department, rather than one person responsible for all departments (Al Amri, 2020). It is necessary to set up feedback from the users of the site, listen to constructive criticism, and not be afraid of mistakes.
In 2021 users of the site complained about a large amount of intrusive advertising. The place was compared to another social network Facebook, which has a distorted ratio of ads to regular posts. Therefore, changes in the algorithms of advertising offers, promotions, and other things will not be superfluous for the company. Attracting famous personalities to invest will bring the company more publicity among the population, as was seen in the situation with Elon Musk. Perhaps more people invest in companies and report on them. The more ordinary users will be interested in using the site.
Twitter is one of the first social networks of the 2000s. Despite the decline in audience reach, it is still among the top most popular platforms for ordinary users and businesses. Millions of people every day share their impressions, jokes, and opinions on the Web. It has a broad influence on the public masses and helps people in publicizing scandalous and problematic situations. But the site still needs a major reorganization to continue being one of the most popular social networks. Despite the fact of continuous growth of Twitter’s popularity and adaptation to personal needs, this website should be more flexible.
Reference
Al Amri, J. (2020). Twitter privacy concern: The effect of Twitter profile. International Journal of Computers & Technology, 20, 22–37.