Full disclosure, I Twitter because it’s more viable for business in my specific industry. I Twitter because the R.O.I is better for me and is better for content aggregation. I Twitter because it is less invasive than Facebook.
In recent years we have seen Facebook mirror much of the popular features that Twitter functionality is reliant upon. Hashtags, trending topics and other similar aspects are now part of the Facebook landscape.
At a financial conference on Wednesday in New York, Twitter CFO Anthony Noto hinted at some changes that may be on the horizon. Changes that are apart of the ideas introduced by new head of product Daniel Graf who came to Twitter from Google in April of this year.
Noto stated per the Wall Street Journal:
“Twitter’s timeline is organized in reverse chronological order… but this “isn’t the most relevant experience for a user,” Noto said. Timely tweets can get buried at the bottom of the feed if the user doesn’t have the app open, for example. “Putting that content in front of the person at that moment in time is a way to organize that content better.””
This directly piggybacks off of statements made by CEO Dick Costolo. When Costelo was asked whether Twitter would ever implement a “Facebook-style” filtering algorithm he responded by saying they wouldn’t “rule it out”.
As many businesses will tell you there is a lot of cons to the pros of social media marketing. The exposure and potential branding benefits are evident but Facebook’s filtration algorithm has diminished the value of advertising. Additionally, it is hard for businesses or brands to determine what are true analytical information as Facebook reporting is not very transparent.
Twitter’s advertising platform is a step behind, but more for a lack of options and the fact this is a new venture for their service offerings.
By filtering content in this new way it greatly diminishes the value delivered to small to mid sized businesses or startup brands. Essentially, this allows big-money corporations to have a monopoly over the advertising channels of social media because their budgets can and will dictate Facebook & Twitter content dissemination.
Sure, the little guys will get the “pub” but it’s hard to believe there is a fair-market environment when and if this new algorithm is uniform across the biggest social media platforms. And again, there is no transparency to the analytical data.
Twitter is popular for being everything Facebook is not and it should be more troubling to hear Twitter is potentially mirroring Facebook’s “anything” considering their abrasive invasive practices with their new Messenger system.
The raw, continually flowing aspect of Twitter creates a behavior of constant refresh and keeps users engaged. So if this new algorithm is instituted will user activity decrease knowing they aren’t being shown the latest content in the manner they are used to.
In my opinion this is a discouraging development for Twitter and only begs the market for more diversity so we aren’t heavily reliant on only two platforms who more and more, are losing their individuality while sacrificing user trust and a sense of comfort.
