Not only is Twitter continuing to disappoint investors, some are arguing that it is losing the attention battle to other platforms, including Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat.
In an article published on Digiday, a number of publishing experts explain why Twitter is no longer important to publishers eager to amplify their content.
Figures from Parsely show that even Yahoo outperforms Twitter as a traffic driver – the typical publisher gets only 1.5 percent of its traffic from Twitter, compared to about 40 percent each from Facebook and Google.
According to the CEO of RebelMouse:
For new media companies, Twitter is the afterthought and the side job…We don’t see any media companies on our platform who are either having success driving traffic on Twitter or have that as a goal anymore.
The Boston Globe spent much less time live tweeting this election, choosing to focus on Facebook to engage young people. NBC News is no longer investing in new Twitter opportunities.
It’s true that 59% of Twitter users get news on the platform, but the truth is that only 16% of US adults use Twitter in the first place. Only 9% of US adults get news on Twitter, compared to 44% getting their news via Facebook. Facebook and Instagram offer bigger audiences and better visual features. Twitter’s Periscope has begun to lose out to Facebook Live.
The article goes on to include some news providers who are not giving up on Twitter. Newsrooms such as CNN consider Twitter an essential tool to disseminate and gather news while USA Today has been prioritising Twitter as a way to monetise videos (via Amplify).