How should Twitter grow from here?

At ten years old, Twitter is probably having a mid-life crisis. It's finding the younger generation harder to appeal and its fans are not loving it as much as before. “Adapting” too much and it can lose its identity, while doing nothing can accelerate the arrival of the “has-been” status. Marking its birthday anniversary a few days ago, the social media tool is embarking on a serious soul-searching although it remains a billion-dollar business.

Good news is that, despite the ongoing turbulence featuring a slow-growing number of users and relatively limited opportunities to monetise itself, Twitter as a company is not expected to go belly-up anytime soon. Business analysts still see and highly regard the platform's signature service of capturing real-time conversations around big news events like the US presidential primaries, natural disasters, political upheavals or major sport developments. People are still turning to Twitter when something of high significance happens in the world.

In addition, Twitter's ads income has been considerable and is still growing. In 2015, the ads reportedly amounted to nearly $2 billion, a 59 percent jump from the year before. But Twitter has been suffering from one particular curse, which is that whatever it does has to be compared with its main competitors.

Which brings us to the bad news _ the relatively small amount of financial returns. Taking the comparisons into account, the present doesn't look so bright and the future is not very promising, either. A hounding question, according to the adweek.com website specialising on media news, has to do with whether Twitter will be able to attract Gen Z and younger millennials when today's kids are flocking to mobile apps like Snapchat, Instagram and Kik in order to steer clear of their parents on Facebook. The young people's migration is taking place without them “giving a second thought to Twitter, seemingly.”

Twitter always has to play catch-up with advertisers. This specific situation is more glaring in Thailand, where Twitter is recognised more for its non-profit merits. During a flood disaster a few years ago, Twitter was a major tool for mobilisation of rescue and relief efforts. Both sides in the Thai political strife took to tweeting to advocate different ideologies. These are activities that cannot produce handsome financial returns. To make things worse, Twitter has often been compared with Facebook, whose number of registered users has grown more rapidly and financial promises when investors are concerned have been fulfilled more.

While Facebook may not be able to compete with Twitter on breaking news, the former has matched the latter toe-to-toe on the “empowerment” aspect. And it's not just political empowerment we are talking about here. Facebook users have been flooded with additional choices when it comes to shopping, fashion or cosmetics, for example.

Make no mistake. You can have a Twitter account and create an environment that serves your interests. You can follow authors, receive a stream of feeds about books through relevant hashtags and engage in conversations with like-minded people. The challenge for Twitter is to make “you” really drive its business through more flexible and attractive layouts. 

Twitter is pretty much relevant, socially, politically and financially. As Adweek puts it, “The social network that changed the culture [is having] its troubles, but it's still very much at the party.” That a soul -searching is required so early is anything but a cause for complacency, though. In this brave new world, innovations come and go, including what at first seemed like the smartest ones.