SO far this month, the man who will become the next president of the United States has turned to Twitter to announce his pick for secretary of state, declare Saturday Night Live "unwatchable" and to defend a phone call with Taiwan's president.
His tweets have sent Lockheed Martin's stock price plunging, dredged up conflicts with China and led to the harassment of labor leaders, reporters and others. Twitter, he has said, is "a modern-day form of communication" -- and he has 34,100 Tweets of his own to prove it.
"There is no doubt that Donald Trump has become Twitter's most powerful ambassador," said Youssef Squali, an analyst for Cantor Fitzgerald. "Who needs a press secretary when you've got Twitter?"
And yet, even with loads of publicity from one of the world's most powerful leaders, Twitter's stock is stuck in a months-long slump. In the 18 months since Trump announced his run for president, the company's share price has tumbled 45 percent. The company last quarter posted a $103 million loss.
"Even though Trump is all over Twitter, it's not really attracting new users," said Michael Pachter, an analyst for Wedbush Securities. "It's certainty attracting interest among existing users -- his follower count has gone from 7 million to 17 million in the last year -- but I doubt very many of those people are new users. Twitter hasn't done a very good job of exploiting that."
Instead, financial analysts say Twitter continues to deal with myriad internal issues that have alienated advertisers and made it all but impossible for the 10-year-old company to turn a profit.
Growth has stalled in recent quarters, both in terms of new users and revenue, and almost all of the company's senior management has left in the past two years.
In October, the San Francisco-based company announced it would be laying off 9 percent of its staff, or about 350 people, many of them in its sales department.
"Twitter is a mess," said Richard Kramer, an analyst at Arete, a London-based equity research firm. "It's not growing users. It's not growing sales. The fact that they put themselves up for sale but weren't bought says its value is expected to only decline."
Twitter did not respond to requests for comment. Last quarter, the company said it had 317 million monthly active users, a 3 percent increase from the year before. (Facebook, by comparison, reported 1.79 billion users, a 16 percent increase, during the same period.)
One of the biggest problems, Kramer said, is that Twitter has long had difficulty attracting advertisers because it knows so little about its users. Unlike Facebook and Google, which collect a plethora of data about users, Twitter doesn't require people to sign up using their real names and doesn't ask for information such as birth date, location or gender. On top of that, he says, Tweets are often laden with personal attacks and incendiary rhetoric -- not exactly something advertisers want to be associated with.
"What company wants to put up an ad saying 'Colgate gets your teeth whiter' next to a tweet that's full of inflammatory or abusive language?," Kramer said. "It's not brand-safe."
And yet, some say, Twitter's willingness to allow unfiltered, unedited content on its site is a large part of its appeal -- as Trump has demonstrated time and again.
'That lack of fact-checking is Twitter's greatest liability, but also its greatest asset," Squali said. "The fact that Trump is circumventing everybody -- the media, his staff -- and going straight to 20 million, 30 million users, that's very powerful."
"But," he added, "how do you get from there to financial success? That's the billion-dollar question."
The Washington Post
Fri Dec 16 2016
In October, the San Francisco-based company announced it would be laying off 9 percent of its staff, or about 350 people, many of them in its sales department. - Filepic
AWANI Ringkas: Projek NTC | Sindiket Dadah
Ikuti rangkuman berita utama yang menjadi tumpuan sepanjang hari di Astro AWANI menerusi AWANI Ringkas.
Kilang cat terbakar, dua sekolah di Meru diarah ditutup
Penutupan dua buah sekolah terlibat iaitu SK Meru dan Sekolah Rendah Agama Meru 2 itu dibuat atas faktor keselamatan.
AWANI 7:45 [29/04/2024] – Meja bulat bersama 50 pemimpin industri dunia | Penggunaan komersial capai 80 peratus
PM yakin Malaysia jadi destinasi pelabur bernilai tinggi.
Kerajaan perkenal program solar untuk pengguna komersial.
Kelas Terapung dilaksana kawasan penduduk kepadatan tinggi.
Laporan Bank Dunia dedah hanya 58 peratus pelajar mahir membaca menjelang akhir darjah 5.
Kerajaan perkenal program solar untuk pengguna komersial.
Kelas Terapung dilaksana kawasan penduduk kepadatan tinggi.
Laporan Bank Dunia dedah hanya 58 peratus pelajar mahir membaca menjelang akhir darjah 5.
Malaysia perlu berani menentang Denmark
Hanya kemenangan menentang Denmark, kuasa besar badminton dunia, dalam aksi penting Kumpulan D Piala Thomas 2024 esok akan membawa Malaysia mendahului carta kedudukan.
Polis tembak kereta mewah bawa dadah lebih RM100,000
Polis terpaksa melepaskan tembakan bagi mengawal keadaan selepas pemandu kenderaan terbabit bertindak agresif dan cuba merempuh anggota polis .
Indonesia sokong pendekatan Malaysia bantu bangun 'peradaban' banduan Indonesia
Penjara bukan semata-mata tempat menghukum tetapi mentransformasikan ia sebagai institusi pendidikan yang memberi peluang kepada penghuni.
Polis siasat dakwaan pusat keagamaan di Nilai lakukan aktiviti mencurigakan
Ketua Polis Negeri Sembilan Datuk Ahmad Dzaffir Mohd Yussof berkata pihaknya menerima laporan berhubung perkara tersebut Jumat lepas.
Semua laluan Malaysia-Thai di daerah Tak Bai, Sungai Golok, Weng ditutup sementara
Jalan ke Sungai Golok dari daerah Tak Bai ditutup untuk pemeriksaan selepas skuad pemusnah bom menemukan paku bertaburan di jalan raya.
Pengwujudan dua negara berdaulat satu penyelesaian
Perdana Menteri Jordan, Bisher Hani Al Khaswneh berkata Israel terus melakukan kesilapan dengan menyerang gaza dan berharap untuk mendapat hasil yang berbeza. Beliau turut berkata pengwujudan dua negara berdaulat adalah satu penyelesaian asas yang enggan difahami dan diterima Israel.
[TERKINI] PETRONAS dagangan jual 16 bilion liter bahan api, perolehan RM37.55 bilion
Ini laporam yangh baharu kami terima.
PETRONAS Dagangan Bhd mencatatkan jumlah jualan melebihi 16 bilion liter bahan api tahun lalu, meningkat lapan peratus tahun ke tahun, manakala perolehan sebanyak RM37.55 bilion.
PETRONAS Dagangan Bhd mencatatkan jumlah jualan melebihi 16 bilion liter bahan api tahun lalu, meningkat lapan peratus tahun ke tahun, manakala perolehan sebanyak RM37.55 bilion.