Can Twitter beat Facebook?

A perspective of how social media value can be converted to revenue

Photo by Saulo Mohana on Unsplash

Facebook is a monster profit making business. Twitter, on the other hand, is struggling to stay in profits. Which do you prefer? Twitter or Facebook? I know there are those who will say that they are not competitors. But we all know they are in the same industry. And that makes them competitors, at least indirectly.

I don’t know about you but I prefer Twitter by a large margin. Facebook is quite generalized and they are always trying to expand and extend further into the lives of people. Just recently, Facebook announced its own platform for online dating. What about Twitter? They’ve mostly kept to their core purpose and are not extending. Should they extend? Emphatically NO! So, how are they supposed to make (more) money?

Let me ask the question; would you pay to use Facebook? I would never. Would you pay to use Twitter? I can, but Twitter has to offer something more, something unique. Twitter should worth more than Facebook in my opinion. They deliver much more in value to users than Facebook. I still have a Facebook account, but I have abandoned it for years. Initially, Facebook was fun. It stopped being fun when people who are not really my friends started sending me friend’s request. Out of an accommodating heart, I accepted their request and then I started seeing their jargon on my timeline. It got so bad that I couldn’t even see the people I got on Facebook for anymore. It was just filled with jargon from these “friends”. So Facebook was abandoned. Twitter on the other hand makes you follow who you want. People can follow you but you have no obligation to follow back. This means they can be interested in you while you are not interested in them. No hard feelings.

However, Facebook has successfully modeled a business framework consistent with their platform; the ads. However, Twitter has not really gotten a hang of the right business model for their platform. Twitter implements the ads thing too, but it is boring, not really okay and regulations will continue to make it difficult. Plus, I don’t think Twitter makes enough money from it. Twitter doesn’t need to have the same number of users with Facebook to exceed Facebook’s revenue. The thing is, it is awkward to pay to use Facebook, but a lot of devoted Twitter users will pay to use the app. Am I saying Twitter should make users pay for its use? Of course not! (Well, except if they implement on the crypto platform). The point here is that Twitter ought to leverage on the population who use the platform who can pay for it. Twitter Premium? I have something even better.

Instead of a premium like LinkedIn, Twitter could create another platform, an offshoot of Twitter that is available to only paid subscribers.

Twitter Hot; jaw dropping information from public figures and celebs. You get to see the tweet the second it drops.

Twitter Wars; people argue a lot on Twitter. Why not create a neat platform for it. I know people who would gladly pay for that.

There are much more ideas that can be presented as “Twitter Premium”

I’m particularly fascinated by the Twitter Wars idea. You would be surprised the things people can do to defend their opinions and ideas. The idea is best suited for Twitter but of course, other tech companies can hijack it. While thinking of this, Apple came to my mind. And you know what, the perfect name came straightaway; iDisagree ☺.

Now, we understand more than ever the differences that exist in the world. Many like to classify the world and create these boxes that people are “forced” to fit in. And since social media platform is a thing now, arguments and debates should have a place. Definitely not destructive arguments but good and critical ones.

Talking about value offered to users, I personally rate Twitter above Facebook. I know Facebook is well grounded and gotten some things right but their growth potential isn’t as promising as it used to be (from my perspective). I’d still rate Whatsapp over Facebook when it comes to value to users. However, Facebook has some really strong areas like Facebook groups and the ads business model. Facebook cannot easily descend into obscurity, but it may suffer the fate of Yahoo in a few years if care is not taken.

As for Twitter, I expect it to be the leader in social media but for now, it is far from that reality. Let’s hope they have cool things coming that will wow the world. As I often say; the future is not predicted, it is made. I kind of wish to be in the game on one of the big tech companies creative teams. But then, by the time I’ll “qualify”, I probably won’t be interested anymore.

Let’s hope we get wowed by one of the big tech companies soon. Cheers!

P.S. I know Facebook company owns Whatsapp and Instagram. In most cases here, I refer to Facebook as the social networking platform, not the company. The context makes it clear.