Twitter has undergone a facelift that looks set to make it more effective for marketing online. The new interface aims to make the service easier to use for beginners, thus increasing its user base and marketing online to more users. The redesign also aims to increase user involvement, again potentially motivated by the fact that if a user spends more time on Twitter they will be more aware of the marketing online.
The updated design removes the dependence on hashtags (#) and @ and adds new navigation buttons of ‘Home’, ‘Connect; and ‘Discover’. This will help novice users discover what’s happening on Twitter easier and also give better direction to sponsored tweets for marketing online. Twitter have also launched branded pages to further marketing online, as well as new updates for mobile platforms Android and iOS as the social network recognises the significance of mobile marketing.
What all these updates appear to do on the surface is to provide a service that looks a lot more like Facebook, the king of social media marketing online. Facebook has long been the market leader for social networks with over 800 million, far ahead of Twitter’s 100 billion users. What Facebook also excels at is engagement with its users, with impressive statistics estimating the average user spends 46 minutes a day on the site making it invaluable for marketing online. Twitter does not have such engagement with many accounts being underused. Twitter will wish to improve on this aspect by becoming more like Facebook, however it is important that it does not become an exact replica of its rival. However it clearly wants the ease of entry and length of engagement that Facebook has, giving it the same revenue potential from marketing online, whilst retaining its identity.
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