Elon Musk’s buyout of Twitter for $44 billion could provide the micro-blogging company the much-needed impetus to rework the company’s revenue and business model.
Sanchit Vir Gogia, Chief Analyst and CEO, Greyhound Research, told BusinessLine that right now the two key focus areas for Twitter will be to improve the product and unlocking revenue lines.
“I think Twitter definitely needs a bit of a shake-up. It has not been performing in many accounts, be it in revenue metrics or performance, even simple things like tapping onto big markets like India and China, where a lot of volumes come from. There’s no INR pricing either,” said Gogia.
“In terms of user acquisition, too, they haven’t been able to make big waves. There’s no choice but to go private, as some of the major changes can come only when it goes private. Even Dell did it. The company needs to be away from QoQ pressures to make bold moves and out of the box moves. From a growth perspective, it is important to shake up the environment. This will work and for it to work you need a few extreme measures,” Gogia added.
Meanwhile, the co-founder and former CEO of Twitter, Jack Dorsey, took to the platform, saying Musk is the ‘singular solution’ he trusts.
He wrote: “The idea and service is all that matters to me, and I will do whatever it takes to protect both. Twitter as a company has always been my sole issue and my biggest regret. It has been owned by Wall Street and the ad model. Taking it back from Wall Street is the correct first step.”
“In principle, I don’t believe anyone should own or run Twitter. It wants to be a public good at a protocol level, not a company. Solving for the problem of it being a company however, Elon is the singular solution I trust. I trust his mission to extend the light of consciousness,” said Dorsey.
Absolute free speech not possible
Faisal Kawoosa, Founder and Chief Analyst, techARC, believes that dramatic changes to Twitter won’t happen overnight, even if Musk acquired it.
“As a personality, Musk looks like someone who doesn’t fit with a structure on a framework, which will not go down well with the governments.”
“Platforms like Twitter want to provide freedom of speech, but it is bound by the law of the land in whichever country it is operating in. From Twitter India’s perspective, there has been a lot of issues like fake posts, agenda-driven narrative and fake followers; as of now it looks like he wants to make it open source, which will enable other people to build their apps on it, but will he be able do it quickly and whether he will succeed. The bigger issue is Musk has to think on monetisation of Twitter,” Kawoosa told BusinessLine.
He added: “If he says that he wants to make the platform’s userbase transparent, he will have to remove the entire chunk of bot-based users, which might reflect on Twitter’s total userbase. It is too early to contemplate the impact on whether he can make Twitter India-friendly; even if he tries, there will be certain restrictions.”
Published on
April 26, 2022
