Twitter grew popular by allowing easy sharing of short status updates, or "tweets", through text messages. This let users share what they were doing in real-time from anywhere. As more prominent accounts like news stations, celebrities, and politicians joined, they contributed valuable content that attracted more regular users. Twitter now draws the most followers to celebrities, news outlets, large companies promoting products, and government officials who provide interesting, relevant information to users. To increase revenues, Twitter should diversify beyond ads, develop new products and services users may pay for, and capture more of the social media advertising market with improved ad offerings.

1. BMEC GROUP 4 – AKANKSHA R (05), ANKIT L(07), AKANKSHA S(105), ANURAAG S(147)
Q1. How did Twitter amass so many users?
Twitter was built around the idea of sharing your status with friends really easily so that they knew
what the user was doing, but at the same time, the user didn’t have to write an entire blog entry or
LiveJournal entry. These statuses were called “tweets” and could be sent from any location, using
text messages from cellphones. Subsequently the options for “Direct Messages” and “Tagged
Replies” were also added to it. This made Twitter very popular and amassed a lot of users.
Q2. Which Twitter users contribute content and which ones do not? Why?
Twitter entered into the mainstream when it had content contribution from TV Stations like CNN
News. In times of natural disasters or emergency-like situations, users would post updates and
dispense information on Twitter. Celebrities also took to Twitter as a way of communicating
directly with the fans. Even Obama used it to promote himself during the Presidential Campaign
in US in 2008. Some companies also used twitter as a way of promoting their products. Following
the launch of multimedia features with Twitter, the content contribution from news partners like
The New York Time, Buzzfeed, etc. increased. This feature was called an “Expanded tweet” and
displayed a preview of a headline along with the beginning few words of the article.
Q3. Who gets followed on Twitter and who does not? Why?
The following types of users get followed the most on Twitter because they are providing some
relevant information/information of interest to the users:
 Celebrities
 News Stations
 Popular companies promoting their products (Domino’s, Walmart, etc.)
 Government Officials
Q4. What should Twitter do to increase its revenues?
Twitter should move away from relying completely on ad revenues. It should:
 Diversify its revenue stream into other areas. Come up with other innovative products.
 Look into the possibility of implementing a “Freemium” model for Twitter. Do a market
research to find out if there are features that the users would not mind paying for.
 Could also try to develop more advertising products and capture more of social media ad
budgets.