As Jack Dorsey visits India, experts feel Twitter still has a long way to go here

Jack Dorsey: There were reports that the founder of microblogging website Twitter spent more time pursuing yoga and fashion designing than running the company. This led to his ousting in 2008. He returned to Twitter as Executive Chairman in 2011.

Even as Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey makes the right noises on his maiden visit to India, experts feel the social media platform has missed several opportunities to make itself relevant in the country.

In its most recent earnings announcement in October, Twitter reported annual increase of 29 percent in revenue to $758 million.

But its monthly active users fell to 326 million in the September quarter, a number Twitter expects to drop further as it tries to rid the platform of fake profiles to tackle abuse, which has been a growing problem among users.

Twitter does not break up its users or revenue by geography.

In his maiden visit to India this week, Twitter co-founder and CEO Jack Dorsey reiterated the company's commitment to the Indian market, but analysts feel Twitter hasn't quite done enough.

"Twitter does not even account for 5 per cent of revenue from social media platforms in India," said Meenakshi Tiwari, a forecast analyst who looks at business technology and digital marketing at research firm Forrester.

Facebook, she added, has the majority chunk of social media in India. The reach of Facebook in tier-3 and tier-4 places is much more than that of Twitter.

Celebrities, who are a huge draw for users, are now more active on Instagram, which is again a Facebook property, Tiwari said.

Fall from grace

Over the years, Indian users of Twitter have developed a love-hate relationship with the platform.

"Twitter was, until about a decade ago, a very good platform to get a fair idea of what people were talking about on a given day. But today, most of that organic discovery is gone, and replaced by obviously promoted trends," said a social media manager at a Delhi-based advertising firm who did not wish to be named.

With the trigger-happy nature of the medium taking a toll, users have chosen to quit the platform because of trolling or hate speech through anonymous accounts. Twitter also suspends abusive or problematic accounts if reported by other users.

"Twitter has not capitalised on localisation tools either, which will be critical for expanding into India. The result has been that newer, local platforms like Gutrgoo, have sprung up that will prove a challenge to Twitter in the local language space," said Sanchit Vir Gogia, co-founder and CEO at Greyhoud Research.

Gutrgoo is an Indian social media platform that is slowly gaining popularity. It promises a cleaner, more moderated form of discussion and is cashing in on its Indian origin to lure people in the country.

But experts said another reason why marketers no longer consider Twitter seriously is its high ad rates, which are six to eight times more expensive when compared to Facebook.

"More specifically, on the ad rates, the company needs to work out a local billing system with pricing that works for the country," said Gogia.

Acquisitions "missed opportunity"

Twitter acquired live video streaming app Periscope and Indian missed call startup Zipdial in 2015.

While Periscope saw some traction initially, it never really got the kind of mass appeal that Facebook Live videos did.

The Zipdial deal, rumoured to be in the ballpark of $30-40 million, was also never capitalised on in a meaningful way, and Twitter shut down the engineering division at Zipdial in 2016.

"They had acquired Zipdial to tap onto the missed call market but nothing concrete has been seen yet from Twitter to capitalise on the missed call market in India and expand to Tier-2 and 3 towns. If Twitter indeed wants the pecking order in the local social media ecosystem, then it must manage such local nuances better," said Gogia.

Tiwari of Forrester said Twitter has not been able to cash in on video trends.

In October 2015, Twitter also launched its curated stories feature called Moments, a curated section of the platform with the most popular or relevant stories of the day.

The feature found decent acceptance in the US market around the time it was launched, but has slowly fizzled out.

"They also missed the opportunity to build Moments as a product in India," said Gogia.

India's general elections the next opportunity?

Earlier  this week, Dorsey landed in India and visited the Dalai Lama, Jaipur city, attended a townhall with students at Indian Institute of Technology - Delhi, and also met Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Opposition leader Rahul Gandhi.

Also Read: Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey's India visit: Here's what he had to say on fake news and artificial intelligence

Ahead of India's upcoming general election, it is clear that Dorsey is looking to promote conversations on Twitter and get more people to join the platform.

During his IIT-Delhi visit, he launched the #Powerof18 campaign -- an initiative aimed at young voters -- asking them to take to Twitter and discuss issues they find relevant.

On the other hand, Twitter is also grappling with the issue of weeding out fake news from its platform.

"It is very easy for fringe elements to develop a narrative on Twitter or Facebook. To my mind, curbing this is the biggest challenge they face because of the need to balance freedom of expression and what could be seen as communally coloured commentary," said an executive with a media management company who did not wish to be named.

Getting new users is key to the success of Twitter, because that will eventually lead to more ad revenue.