In March, 2006, Twitter became a leader in social networking when it was launched by Jack Dorsey, its creator who sent his first “Tweet” on March 21. The following month, Twitter was launched as a separate company, with its mission to “give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly, without barriers” (About Twitter, 2014.) Since then, the company has accumulated more than 284 million active users on a monthly basis, sending 500 million Tweets daily; in addition, more than 75% of accounts are located outside the United States, and the service now supports more than 35 languages (About Twitter, 2014.) Naturally, the success of Twitter has inspired many competitors in the social network arena. This paper will discuss four of those competitors–Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram– covering their marketing strategies, and presenting a SWOT analysis of Twitter, Inc.
Facebook, Inc., is a social networking website that originated in 2000 were in a Harvard dormitory by Mark Zuckerberg, along with his college roommates and fellow Harvard students. This online social network service was initially limited to Harvard students, but gradually expanded its user base to include any person who is at least 13 years of age around the world. Facebook’s marketing strategy involves allowing users to personalize their profiles pipe connecting with other users, exchanging messages, share videos, and join common interest groups that are linked by academic settings, workplace colleagues, allowing people to divide up their contacts into categories such as work colleagues or intimate friends. Facebook’s marketing strategy differs greatly from twitters in that the content that is posted is virtually unlimited, the length of messages also unlimited, and the viewership of any specific page may be as wide or is narrow as the user desires. Facebook has become the most widely used social networking site in the world.
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"Twitter And Its Competitors".
A major competitor for Twitter, Google has retained a high place in the social media market because of making intelligent decisions involving smart business moves. They use the power of less, meaning that they provide a clean, simple, and interference-free search engine (Marketing Strategy–Case Study of Google, 2014.) On a Google page, the logo is immediately identifiable in the search engine is extremely fast to load. In addition, a major marketing strategy for Google is that they have posted no advertisements on their website, only preferences. This originates from Google’s understanding that when people are looking for certain information, they do not want distractions. In addition, the sources offered by Google or reliable generally; in addition, the company is a master at providing direct marketing rather than brand marketing. There are hundreds and thousands of businesses that use Google to market themselves, which is how the company grows because so many businesses large themselves from the Google platform. Finally, Google has a solid and long-standing reputation, cornering at least 60% of all the searches around the world (Marketing Strategy–Case Study of Google, 2014.)
Another popular social networking site is LinkedIn, whose goal is to connect professionals with each other in order to help them achieve success in more productivity (Home, 2014.) The company has grown immensely, and its marketing strategy includes job listings, people searches, company searches, advertising, professional identity groups, and collaboration within professional groups. The company includes more than 300 million members from every Fortune 500 company, and expands by reaching out to current members and offering them links to other professionals that may have common career interests and personal acquaintances in common. Finally, Instagram is another social networking option that involves a community where people can share the images that they have captured in photos or videos. Their marketing strategy has been to differentiate themselves from the other social media by focusing on the visual aspect of sharing information. This social networking site is different because it allows its users to tell their stories through visual images rather than words, and that concept is largely how it promotes itself.
A SWOT analysis of Twitter reveals that the company offers many strengths. These include a tremendous amount of publicity captured by the network, its simplicity of use combined with the power that it wields to shape and influence opinion, it is free of charge to all users, and it has a tremendously well known brand name. In addition, it contains no advertisements, is available in real time, and provides a tremendous capacity for people to discover things and share them with others (LaBoon, 2009.) However, there are some weaknesses associated with Twitter. For example, the site is down very frequently, indicating that there is a need for much more horsepower. There is also an unequal distribution of tweets, with about 90% of messages coming from the top 10% of all users (LaBoon, 2009.) Finally, twitter also has a very low retention rate, with only about 40% of users sticking with the service.
There are also many opportunities for Twitter to expand. It has the potential to become a major search engine, and is already the biggest social media marketing tool (LaBoon, 2009.) It also might develop a tool to connect Twitter accounts, making each site a social one. Finally, it presents significant abilities for businesses to be able to communicate with their customers, and may also be able to capture a large portion of desktop clients. The threats to Twitter’s dominance of the market include the fact that it has no solid revenue model, and also has difficulties with people setting up unauthorized accounts posing as celebrities. There is also a great deal of spam associated with Twitter, and the closet the tremendous amount of publicity Twitter has garnered within a short time, there is always the possibility that its popularity may wane as other social media networks gain in popularity. Finally, Facebook is a powerful competitor, and there is also the potential for acquisition by Google which would significantly disappoint its loyal users (LaBoon, 2014.)
- About Twitter. (2014). Retrieved from Twitter.com: https://about.twitter.com
- Home. (2014). Retrieved from LinkedIn.com: https://www.linkedin.com/
- LaBoon, P. (2009, June 9). A SWOT Analysis of Twitter. Retrieved from Eyeflow.com: http://www.eyeflow.com/
- Marketing Strategy–Case Study of Google. (2014). Retrieved from Study Marketing.org: http://www.studymarketing.org/
