Twitter, Inc. (Twitter) operates as a platform for public self-expression and conversation in real time worldwide.
The company’s primary product, Twitter, is a global platform for public self-expression and conversation in real time. It has democratized content creation and distribution so people can consume, create, distribute, and discover content about the topics and events they care about most. Through Topics, Interests, and Trends, the company helps people discover what’s happening through...
Twitter, Inc. (Twitter) operates as a platform for public self-expression and conversation in real time worldwide.
The company’s primary product, Twitter, is a global platform for public self-expression and conversation in real time. It has democratized content creation and distribution so people can consume, create, distribute, and discover content about the topics and events they care about most. Through Topics, Interests, and Trends, the company helps people discover what’s happening through text, images, on demand and live video, and audio from people, content partners, media organizations, advertisers, and others. Media outlets, websites, and other partners extend the reach of Twitter content by distributing Tweets beyond the company’s app and website.
In 2021, the company continued its work to serve the public conversation by helping people find trusted sources of information and by better organizing and surfacing the many topics and interests that bring people to Twitter, with a focus on personalization and selection. The company launched products to continue helping people stay informed and discuss what matters to them, such as Twitter Spaces, a new way to have live audio conversations on Twitter; and Communities, a new way to easily find and connect with people who have similar interests. The company also worked to help people and businesses get paid on Twitter by introducing Ticketed Spaces, Super Follows, and Tips, which give people the ability to pay creators using a variety of payment methods to send currency or Bitcoin to creators. The company also introduced Twitter Blue, Twitter’s first-ever consumer subscription offering. Twitter Blue allows the company’s most passionate and engaged accounts to pay for exclusive features and perks that enhance and complement their existing Twitter experience.
In addition, the company has made significant progress on its brand and direct response offerings with updated ad formats, improved targeting, and better measurement. The company has also continued to refine its Mobile Application Promotion (MAP) and Website Traffic offerings.
In January 2022, the company closed the sale of its MoPub business to AppLovin Corporation. The sale of MoPub enables the company to concentrate more of its efforts on the significant opportunity for performance-based advertising, small and medium-sized business (SMB) offerings, and commerce initiatives on Twitter.
Products and Services for Advertisers
The company’s Promoted Products enable advertisers to promote their brands, and products and services. The company enables advertisers to target an audience based on a variety of factors, including who an account follows and actions taken on its platform, such as Tweets created and engagement with Tweets. The company’s Promoted Products are incorporated into its platform as native advertising and are designed to be as compelling and useful as organic content on its platform.
The company’s Promoted Products consist of:
Promoted Ads and Twitter Amplify: Promoted Ads, which are labeled as ‘promoted’, appear within a timeline, search results, profile pages, and Tweet conversations. Using its proprietary algorithms and understanding what is relevant to each account, the company can deliver Promoted Ads that are intended to achieve the outcome that the advertiser is seeking. The company enables its advertisers to target an audience based on many criteria. The company’s Promoted Ads are pay-for-performance or pay-for-impression delivered advertising that are priced through an auction. The company’s Promoted Ads include objective-based features that allow advertisers to optimize for the goal selected by the advertisers, such as Tweet engagements (e.g., Retweets, replies and likes), website traffic, mobile application installs or engagements, obtaining new followers, or video views.
Follower Ads: Follower Ads, which are labeled as ‘promoted’, provide a way for the company’s advertisers to build and grow an audience that is interested in their business, product or service. The company’s Follower Ads are pay-for-performance advertising priced through an auction.
Twitter Takeover: Twitter Takeover, which are labeled as ‘promoted’, appear at the top of the list of trending topics or timeline for an entire day in a particular country. The company sells its Twitter Takeover on a fixed-fee-per-day basis.
Advertisers can also run short video ads either before or around premium video content, such as before live premium video content from publishing partners or clips from a variety of interest categories, such as news, sports and entertainment. The company’s technology inserts those advertisers' ads into the relevant videos and delivers the ads to the audience targeted by those advertisers. The company may pay content partners a portion of its advertising revenue for the right to use and distribute their content on its platform. In addition, Amplify Sponsorships allow advertisers to build brand association by sponsoring premium video content from a single publishing partner.
The company redesigned its Amplify pre-roll video ads, designed to drive better brand lift with more ways to match content with ads. The company continues to focus its investment on features that differentiate Twitter and capitalize on its value proposition for advertisers. The company has made progress on its brand and direct response offerings, with updated ad formats, improved targeting, and better measurement for both MAP and website traffic.
The company’s platform enables it to provide targeting capabilities based on audience attributes like geography, interests, keyword, conversation, content, and events that make it possible for advertisers to promote their brands, products and services; amplify their visibility and reach; and complement and extend the conversation around their advertising campaigns.
The company’s platform also enables customers to advertise across the mobile ecosystem, both on Twitter's owned and operated properties, as well as off Twitter on third-party publishers’ websites, applications and other offerings. The company enables advertisers to extend their reach beyond Twitter through the Twitter Audience Platform, an advertising offering that enables advertisers to extend their advertising campaigns with Twitter Promoted Products to audiences off Twitter while retaining access to Twitter's measurement, targeting and creative tools.
Content Partnerships
Video is an important way to stay informed, enabling people on Twitter and the company’s premium content partners to better share experiences, engage in events, and converse with broader audiences. The company continues to improve the conversation around global events and to increase reach, engagement, and monetization for content partners and advertisers around the world through brand safe live-streaming, highlight video clips, and video-on-demand agreements designed to complement the content from people on Twitter across a number of verticals, including sports, news, gaming and entertainment.
Creator Monetization
Creators drive conversations, shape culture, and are some of the most engaging voices on Twitter. By helping them make money, the company provides a clear and direct incentive for them to invest more of their time and money into its platform. To that end, in 2021, the company launched three new monetization products for creators:
Tips: Tips are a way to directly send small one-time payments to anyone on Twitter using a variety of payment methods, including bitcoin.
Super Follows: Super Follows is a paid monthly subscription that offers bonus content, exclusive previews, and perks as a way to support and connect with creators on Twitter.
Ticketed Spaces: Ticketed Spaces is a way to support creators on Twitter for their time and effort in hosting, speaking, and moderating the public conversation on Twitter Spaces. Creators can earn a share of revenue from tickets purchased to their Ticketed Spaces.
The company has also built an earnings dashboard for creators to see a unified view of what they're making over their monetized products and for customers to see their purchase history.
Products for Developers and Data Partners
The Twitter Developer Platform empowers developers around the world to build tools for people and businesses using the company’s public application programming interface (API), or in simpler terms, it gives people more ways to interact with what’s happening on Twitter. This includes data and insights from Tweets, Spaces, polls, and other features that help make Twitter more useful to more people in more places. The Twitter Developer Platform serves commercial and non-commercial developers, including businesses, academics, and consumer developers, among others.
The company also offers paid access to Twitter data for partners with commercial use cases and those who wish to access more data beyond what is available for free through its public APIs. Paying developers typically sign subscriptions, or enterprise agreements, based on the type and volume of usage. The company’s commercial data products and services offer sophisticated APIs and other services to support developers. Its customer-centric approach positions both Twitter and its key partners for greater growth and monetization. The company is investing in deeper partnerships with select solution providers to help businesses and organizations realize greater value from its platform.
Sales and Marketing
The company has a global sales force and sales support staff that is focused on attracting and retaining advertisers while certain advertisers use its self-serve advertising platform to launch and manage their advertising campaigns.
Government Regulation
With regard to privacy, data protection and cybersecurity, the company is subject to a variety of federal, state and foreign laws and regulations. For example, the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) requires covered companies to, among other things, provide disclosures to California consumers, and afford such consumers the ability to opt-out of certain sales of personal information.
Seasonality
Advertising spending is traditionally strongest in the fourth quarter of each year (year ended December 2021). Historically, this seasonality in advertising spending has affected the company’s quarterly results, with higher sequential advertising revenue growth from the third quarter to the fourth quarter compared to sequential advertising revenue from the fourth quarter to the subsequent first quarter.
Competition
The company competes with Meta (including Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp), Alphabet (including Google and YouTube), Microsoft (including LinkedIn), Snapchat, TikTok, Pinterest, and Yahoo, as well as WeChat, Kakao, and Line.
History
Twitter, Inc. was founded in 2006. The company was incorporated in Delaware in 2007.
