Why No One Wants to Buy Twitter

Do you know why McDonald’s started all day breakfast?

Their social media department saw all of the tweets from “millennials” that complained about no breakfast after 10:30 am. The massive number of tweets that were posted day after day prompted them to act. After they implemented all day breakfast, McDonald’s stock began a run that added approximately $20 billion to its market cap. There is enormous value in Twitter.

But who has the key to unlock it before it is too late?

There are competing streaming options for video so as a platform, Twitter itself doesn’t give any key advantage (besides specific commercial deals where they’re the only right holders) and even then, for people to use it actively. In addition, their native social ad formats (e.g. their conversational ads thing) simply aren’t working quite like they’re marketed to.

Why?

Conceptually, the platform itself does not lend to advertising. They tried to jump into the “conversational” bandwagon in, Zuckerberg’s sense of the term (brands able to “join the conversation”) luring CMO’s to put money there; many did of course but no-one wants to have such “conversations” other that to engage with customer service, and frequently to complain.

Plus, their core demographic is getting older. So, they’re not exploiting the potential ripple effect that social network platforms provide (and that’s NOT through rather crude native ad formats) and they’re not exploiting their infrastructure to deliver services that might matter to some verticals. They’re simply looking at the wrong place.

Every social network possesses its own unique DNA, and from we see with regards to Twitter, its a place brands can engage after the sale, not before.