Post-IPO Twitter: will it lose its identity?

Source: nymag.com

Twitter has gone public and a new era has just started. The problem begins though when it should actually now reach the wider public. There was a big comparison this week with the Facebook IPO time, with many people being unsure on whether Twitter can really make it big.

It's good to evolve and seek to reach a bigger audience, but are you really capable of doing it? Most of us know that Twitter is very useful for being updated on important news almost in real-time, but we still admit that it hasn't reached the popularity of Facebook, not even close (which isn't necessarily bad for all of us that hate something when its goes big). How does it evolve then from now on?



It seems that Twitter is trying to re-establish its presence lately, by testing several services. First there was the feature of previewing images on the timeline. It was an idea that would turn Twitter into a more visual network and up to now it seems to work. It is estimated that tweets with images get 18% more clicks, 89% more favorites and 150% more retweets. What's more, Twitter is integrating television to its service more than ever. This leads to a beneficial collaboration for both sides, since TV shows redefine themselves and Twitter becomes mainstream in a profitable way.

Apart from that, Twitter introduced this week the custom timelines, a new feature that allows you to as many timelines as you desire, separating the tweets you might need from specific purposes. And just when you were trying to get used to all the above, Giphy announces that is integrated with Twitter media cards, allowing to play GIFS with a simple click on a link.

Twitter is aware of the need to reach the public and it seems that there will be even more changes coming up soon.

However, will Twitter keep its authenticity after the constant changes? Will it manage to expand without losing its fanbase? Are these changes beneficial, leading to more creative ways of using Twitter, or will it estrange its fans?

Massification doesn't always come without sacrifices and this might be a big challenge for Twitter!