1. What characteristics or benchmarks can be used to assess the business value of company such as Twitter.?

2. What are Twitter's most important assets?

3. Which of the various methods described for monetizing Twitter's assets do you feel might be most successful?

4. Why has Twitter had such a hard time developing a business model that works?

Tweet Tweet: Will Twitter Ever Find a Business Model That Works Welcome to Twitter witter, the social network orginally based on 140-character and messages, continuin Luterge seeming out of nowhere to take the world by Tutter's basic idea was to marry short text messaging ellphones with the Web and its ability to create som Twitter has since expanded beyond simple text mes to article previews, photographs, videos, and even med images, and today has over 336 million active users widwide. The 5,000 tweets a day that it began with in 2006 med into a delue of around 6,000 tweets per second 500 million per day worldwide. Special events, such as the Super Bowl, tend to generate an explosion of tweets, with ajutatol 27.6 milion tweets during the course of the game in 2017 Some celebrities, such as the pop star Katy Perry, have tons of followers in Perry's case, around 110 million Twitter has a number of important assets, such as user ignificant audience size unique visitors, and archable database of Tweets, which contain the real time comments, abservations, and opinions of its audience. Twiter las become essential in modern society as a media aform for the instant distribution of news that many in the Nech industry believe resembles a public utility. However, Twitter has struggled to develop aprofitable business model and display consistent growth Twitter derives the lon's share of its revenue from advertising, with 86% of its 2017 revenue coming from various advertising products, primarily displayed on a mobile device Twitter offers advertisers a variety of options, including Promoted Tweets, Promoted Trends Promoted Accounts, and Promoted Video. Companies pay to have their tweets and Twitter scounts appear higher in Twitter Searches or to reserve a place within Twitter's Trends Section, which shows the most discussed topics of the day. They can also pay to show video advertisements that run prior to video clips embedded within tweets using a product called Twitter Amplily. Video is Twitter's fastest growing advertising segment and, in 2018, has grown to comprise more than half of Twitter's advertising revenue. All of Twitter's advertising products can be geo-targeted both locally and nationally 2. The data is contestateurs, and more on Aquation of comes with suchy tort Topy a mnie To better stormation about sertior, Twitter for de cow to grow and customer went the company gani wilay and increased by over the course 2017 Tar me putty traded company in 2013 with a valuation at that time to the public offering was viewed a who of contine day, despite the company's lack of profes. However, price delicantly from its high over $74 in December 2013 down to mewors than $14 in 2016, wel below 1 IPO price Analysesteder concentratiok beyond the obvioue lach of profits. Twitterrecords mic growth rates between 2015 and 2015 ton Porterono wwed to return to the store flowing month. Twitter also had y urbance want with the top 10 of users accounting for 10% of all tweets. Adverten and Twitter products simply warto col for the aesthey rind, motrat dumy counts and restante ilk of ruining Twitter's ser experi me. Acknowledged for a change in direction, CEO Dick Costol stepped down in 2015. placed by co-founder Jackor Donwy wed to how the company's focus on their care service, with particular emphasis on breaking news Twitter has also moved away from products and features the don't do ang tanance the basic user experience. For example, Twitter had hoped that would become a hub of social e-commerce and rolled out a Buy Now button in 2014 then allowed us to add products ther Amazon Shopping cart. However, in 2016, develop met on the riched due to the usuwam response, and in January 2017. Twitter bun phasing it out. Other services tut have talied to talice off, such as Twitter's Music an ve been sheived until further nation, and even popular features like its Vine app for shortum video were discontinued. Instead, Twitter made changes to bolster its ability to deliver the news, including increasing the character limit for tweets from 140 characters to 280 characters and showing more promoted news content in user timelines. In 2018, Twitter redesigned the Explore tab within its app to improve ease of use, added breaking news alerts, and launched dedicated content hubs for significant events such as the 2018 World Cup that allow users to follow events the way they might follow a person, Twitter is also focusing on improving its premium streaming video capability, including improving support for its popular Periscope video service in 2016, Twitter purchased the rights to stream Thursday night NFL games, and although Amazon outbid Twitter for NFL rights in 2017, Twitter has struck deals with other sports leagues, including the WNBA, MLB PGA out, and sports to provide live event streams. Twitter is also partnering with organizations and other entertainment companies, such as Live Nation, ESPN, Bioortberg and Buzzfeed, and in 2018 the company announced a similar agreement with larvy to provide original content specifically for Twitter Twitter streamed 1,140 live events in the fourth quarter of 2017 and that number is expected to increase quickly, Twitter so Tweet Tweet: Will Twitter Ever Find a Business Model That Work the go-to source for up-to-the-second coverage of what's happening in the world, and now wants its users to be able to watch as well The company is also focusing on its machine learning capabilities, establishing an internal group called Cortex to focus on improving its advertising methods and targeting techniques. Twitter purchased artificial intelligence startup Magic Pony in 2016 to bolster this effort. The company adjusted the way it ranks tweets in users' feeds, emphasizing relevance to individual users instead of simple chronological order, and its machine learning algorithms now decide what types of push notifications to deliver to users. Twitter has also eliminated its less effective advertising formats, focusing only on those that deliver the best engagement for advertisers. Twitter has used these techniques to combat harassment on its platform as well. The company is trying to develop ways to measure what it calls conversational health, and making changes to cut down on interactions that rank poorly in this metric. Twitter adjusted its algorithm to ensure that low-quality tweets are less accessible in searches and conversa- tions, and changed its API to prohibit links and content to be shared using many accounts at once, which is a common technique used by Twitter bots (dummy accounts that are used to spread misinformation). Although Twitter continues to aggressively identify and remove Seremy Bows sicnews.com Twitter and Livestream New Fronts com, May Jobs as it by Mikes October Grappling Tries to Business Times, u Happen Strateg com, Twitter Buy com Righ Garn Isaa TW 10 M het AI H is handling of habitual abusers and hate groups using its platform. In 2017, it removed its de ventication check mark from several users who self-identified as white supremacists. Striking a balance between allowing free speech and policing unacceptable hate speech will continue to be a difficult challenge for Twitter, but Dorsey has candidly embraced it, saying that the company has not done enough and must do better. These changes, in addition to Dorsey's restructuring of Twitter's board and layoffs of 9% of Twitter's workforce, gave investors hope that perhaps Twitter could jumpstart its stagnant growth and finally become profitable. In 2018, it appears the company has managed to achieve that goal. In the fourth quarter of 2017, Twitter recorded the first profitable quarter in the company's history, and the company continued that trajectory in the first quarter of 2018, with $61 million in profit on $665 million in revenue, a 21% increase over the same period in 2017. Even better, the company managed to record a modest increase in monthly active users, primarily driven by large growth in Japan, where the number of Twitter users grew 61% from its 2017 total. The company's stock price has rebounded from a low of $14 per share to approximately $46 in July 2018. While Twitter may never achieve the lofty revenue figures of other prominent tech companies, the company is on track to prove its skeptics wrong with a revamped business model that is driving profitability