Twitter, the 140-character limit social networking website, next only to Facebook in popularity, doesn’t quit share Facebook’s revenue figures and has historically struggled to monetise its business.
However, according to a report by Mint, Twitter India has revealed that the revenue from India for the financial year 2014-15 at a Rs.13.26 crore from 4.17 year in the previous year, has more than tripled.
While the microblogging site is popular with celebrities and micro-influencers in India, the adoption from general public has been low due to the inherent nature and restrictions of the platform. While Twitter still remains a top platform for real time updates and dispensing viral stories from brands, businesses have shied away from advertising on Twitter citing low reach and conversion rates on promoted tweets.
Back at the Twitter HQ, there has been a management shakeup with Dick Costelo resigning as CEO and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey resuming his position as CEO, amidst reports of cost-cutting and increased focus on revenue.
To that end, Twitter has been looking to up the ante on promoting itself as a top advertising platform and has hired some seasoned industry people to head its sales arm. A prominent sign of this change has been Twitter heavily promoting its sponsored post options. The $5000 minimum campaign commitment and advertising through a dedicated partner has been scrapped too. And like Facebook, users can now directly advertise with Twitter with any amount. Twitter is also encouraging users to share more video content on the site.
Twitter has recently introduced the Poll feature which has found interesting use cases with general audience and brands alike. Periscope, the live-streaming feature by Twitter has already found favour with many brands, like Snapdeal, using it for broadcasting real time updates on new products and features to the public.
Looks like all these changes have augured well to improve the bottomline for Twitter.