他能像乔布斯拯救苹果一样拯救Twitter吗？

    投资者对于Twitter的前景依旧缺乏信心。Twitter第三季度财报显示用户增长速度放缓，这家科技公司的股价应声下跌10%，尽管公司收入比2014年增长了58%。自6月份以来，Twitter仅增加了300万新用户，与竞争对手Instagram相比逊色不少——Instagram仅过去9个月便新增1亿用户，用户总数达到4亿。要实现收入与用户数量的均衡增长并非易事。Twitter新任CEO杰克·多尔西的任务异常艰巨。但他至少知道如何提高公司的普及度。

    王者归来？

    在体育和音乐界，复出是常有的事，但CEO复出的情况却并不常见。多尔西希望像史蒂夫·乔布斯一样，重新回到他一手创立的公司，试图力挽狂澜。多尔西在2006年参与创建了Twitter，是该公司首任CEO。但在2008年，他被另外一位联合创始人埃文·威廉姆斯取而代之。2009年，多尔西组建了银行卡移动支付平台Square公司，现在依旧担任该公司CEO——这一点也让他饱受指责。

    2015年7月，多尔西重回Twitter，任临时CEO，2015年10月获得正式任命。他的前任迪克·科斯特洛曾经谈及掌管一家上市公司的压力，尤其是如何处理在股市预期刺激下产生的一些短期想法。如何在满足投资者对公司短期预期的同时，确立一个长期的发展愿景，现在成为多尔西必须解决的难题。最初重返公司时，多尔西提出了一项旨在简化Twitter产品的计划，以帮助人们更容易理解，更愿意使用这个社交平台。他表示，公司将重点“加大对Twitter、Periscope和Vine的投入。”

    问题在于，这项简化工作是否以及何时能够见到成效。实际上，Twitter的每月活跃用户数量同比增长11%，达到3.2亿，较上一季度的3.16亿有所增长。但多尔西还有更多工作要做，并且必须加快速度。让Twitter易于使用，是这家公司在扩大用户基数方面面临的主要挑战。

    第三季度的收入为5.69亿美元，同比增长58%，比预测区间高出900万美元。其中90%来自广告收入（5.13亿美元，同比增长60%）。令人印象深刻的是，有86%的广告收入来自移动广告。第四季度的收入预测区间为6.95亿至7.1亿美元。然而，从每月活跃用户人数这一标准来看，Twitter正陷入困境。投资者通常会用每月活跃用户人数来判断一家社交媒体公司的长期前景（因为这一指标可以吸引更多广告收入）。

    Twitter的现状

    推特的现状浓缩在以下3个领域：新功能Moments，视频，以及吸引中小企业的方式。Moments是Twitter推出的一款新产品，可围绕用户关注的实时事件，聚合有关的推文、图片和视频。这项功能会组织Twitter上最热门的话题，内容由Twitter及其合作伙伴编制。多尔西表示，Moments代表了Twitter思维方式的根本性转变——根据话题而不是事件组织内容，用户可关注话题而不是账户。这款新产品充分体现了Twitter为了变得更易于用户和广告商理解所作出的诸多努力。

    为了宣传Moments，Twitter在世界职业棒球锦标赛期间推出了第一款电视广告。然而，这则广告却遭到部分Twitter用户的反对，他们发现它过于复杂，不清楚它到底在传达什么信息。这也显示出Twitter所面临的双重挑战：一方面，公司要通过简化的界面来吸引新用户，另一方面，现有用户则希望现有服务能够增加新功能。Moments已经开始提供广告。但这项相对较新的服务还有许多问题亟待解决：开发者与广告商是否会采用Moments，将其作为吸引现有受众和新目标受众的新颖方式？ Moments能否帮助Twitter扩大用户基数？

    对于该公司来说，增加 “应用内体验”是一个重要的发展领域。与Facebook的即时文章(Instant Articles)类似，使用户停留在应用内，而不是通过超级链接跳转到浏览器，是增加用户驻留时间的一种重要方式。提高“应用内体验”的结果是，服务的使用频率提高，并且可获得广告商的更多关注。此外，随着视频内容消费量的增加，Twitter也在尝试吸引广告商的视频内容和广告预算。Twiter将在下一个季度发布更多相关产品，如采用Promoted Moments形式的新视频功能。

    最后，Twitter有900万中小企业账户，这是Twitter及其广告商尚未充分利用的一条新营销渠道。只要这些公司认为Twitter可以更容易、更有效地将他们连接到用户与供应商，它们就有可能更愿意使用Twitter提供的服务和广告选择（例如推出粉丝专享促销活动等）。扭转一家公司的局面需要时间和精力，但留给Twitter的时间似乎越来越少，多尔西和他的团队必须加大努力。他们必须在改善现有产品和提供新服务之间实现平衡。只有到那时，Twitter及其CEO才能实现收入与用户的双重增长。（财富中文网）

    本文作者索蒂里奥斯·帕罗蒂斯是沃里克大学战略管理专业副教授。本文最初发表于《The Conversation》。

    译者：刘进龙/汪皓

    审校：任文科

    Investors are still unsure about Twitter’s prospects. The tech company’s stock dropped by 10% after reporting low user growth in its third quarter earnings report, despite seeing revenue grow by 58% compared to 2014. The firm added just 3m new users since June – paling in comparison to rival Instagram, which saw users grow by 100 million to reach 400 millon users in the past nine months alone. Delivering on the equation of revenue and user growth is no mean feat – and the firm’s new CEO Jack Dorsey has a tough job on his hands. But he appears to know at least what it takes to boost the company’s popularity.

    The comeback kid

    Comebacks might be frequent in the world of sports and music, but not so in the world of CEOs. Dorsey is hoping to follow in the footsteps of Steve Jobs in returning to the company he co-founded to help turn its fortunes around. Dorsey helped launch Twitter in 2006 and was its first CEO. But he was replaced by Evan Williams in 2008, another co-founder of the company. Dorsey went on to form Square Inc, a business platform for card payments on mobiles in 2009 and remains its chief executive – something that he has been criticized for.

    He returned as interim CEO in July 2015 and the job was made permanent in October 2015. His predecessor, Dick Costolo, spoke of the pressures involved in running a public company – particularly, dealing with the short-term thinking fueled by stock market expectations. Satisfying short-term expectations in a firm that also needs to build a long-term vision is now the battle Dorsey must fight. When he first took back the reins, Dorsey laid out a vision to simplify Twitter’s product offering – to make it easier to understand and more approachable to people. He said it would focus on “big bets across Twitter, Periscope and Vine.

    The question is if and when this simplification will begin to deliver. The number of monthly active members did actually rise 11% year-over-year to 320 million and saw a slight rise from 316 million in the previous quarter. But more work needs to be done – and at a higher tempo. Making Twitter easier to use is the key challenge the company faces to increase its user base.

    The Q3 revenue of $569 million points to a rise of 58% year-on-year, $9 million above its forecast range. Of this revenue about 90% came from advertising ($513 million, an increase of 60% year-on-year). And an impressive 86% of the total advertising revenue was mobile-based. The forecast range for Q4 is $695 million to $710 million. Yet, in the metric of monthly active users, which is often used by investors to judge the long-term prospects of social media firms (as it helps attract even more advertising revenue), Twitter is struggling.

    Twitter’s moment

    Three areas encapsulate what is happening at Twitter at the moment: Twitter’s new Moments feature, videos and the way it targets small and medium-sized businesses. Moments is a new product that organizes tweets, pictures and video around live events that users can choose to follow. It features the best stories happening on Twitter, prepared by Twitter and select partners. According to Dorsey, Moments represents a fundamental shift in Twitter’s thinking – organizing content by topic instead of timing, where users follow topics live instead of accounts. This sums up the current efforts to make Twitter easier to understand for both users and advertisers.

    In an effort to boost its popularity, Twitter aired its first TV advertisement to showcase Moments during the World Series Baseball tournament. The ad created a backlash from some Twitter users, however, who found it complicated and were unsure of the message it was trying to convey. This vividly shows the dual challenge Twitter has of engaging both new users through a simplified interface and current ones who want extra functionality from the service it already provides. Advertising is already offered within Moments. But as this is a relatively new service, there are still questions to be addressed: will developers and advertisers adopt Moments as a novel way to reach out to current and new audiences? Will Moments help Twitter increase its user base?

    Increasing the “in-app experience” that Twitter offers is an important area of development for the company. Similar to Facebook’s Instant Articles, keeping users inside the app instead of having hyperlinks send them onto a web browser, is an important part of keeping users engaged in their services for longer. The result is more frequent use of its service and more attention by advertisers. And, with the volume of video consumption on the rise, Twitter is trying to attract the video ad budgets of advertisers. In the next quarter there will be more related products released, such as new video features in the form of Promoted Moments.

    Finally, Twitter hosts 9m small and medium-sized business’ accounts that are a new marketing channel that Twitter and its advertisers have yet to fully utilise. If these businesses view Twitter as a way to connect to their users and suppliers easily and more effectively, then they might be more willing to use the array of services and advertising options Twitter is offering (for example, exclusive promotions to their followers). It takes time and effort to turn a business around. And it is at this precise moment, when time seems to be running out, that Dorsey and his team need to step up their efforts. These efforts need to strike a balance by improving current products and offering new services. It is only then that Twitter, and its CEO, will start delivering on both revenue and user growth.

    Sotirios Paroutis is an associate professor of strategic management at the University of Warwick. This article originally appeared on The Conversation.