Twitter Shoots For Simplicity With New ‘Explore’ Tab
by Gavin O’Malley, Staff Writer @mp_gavin, January 26, 2017
Twitter users can say “goodbye” to their Moments tab. In its place, the social giant is slowly rolling out Explore — a new tab that, like Moments, will highlight collections of notable tweets curated by Twitter editors.
Unlike Moments, however, Explore will also include trending topics and live video, as well as the ability for users to search to their heart’s content.
“Until today, you had to go to a few different places to find each of these experiences,” Angela Lam, a product designer at Twitter, notes in a new blog.
In other words, Explore is part of Twitter’s continued effort to simplify its design in order to appeal to a broader audience, and increase usership.
“Over the past year, we’ve been exploring different ways to make it simpler for people to find and use trends, Moments, and search,” according to Lam. “During our research process, people told us that the new Explore tab helped them easily find news, what’s trending, and what’s popular right now.”
Despite its best efforts — which included bringing back Dorsey as CEO, last year — Twitter continues to struggle. Recently, data emerged showing that ad agencies are increasingly bypassing the platform in favor of other social networks, especially Instagram.
Research firm eMarketer recently released a forecast suggesting that Snapchat will overtake Twitter in number of domestic users before the end of the year. More broadly, Twitter has seen few successes since its IPO in 2013. Rather than right its ship, Dorsey has seen Twitter’s stock sink since his return last October.
In October, Twitter said third-quarter revenue was up about 8% — less than the 20% growth reported by the social giant a quarter earlier. It was far less than the 58% growth seen during the third quarter of 2015.
Worse, Twitter said it planned to reduce its global workforce by about 9% — which amounts to roughly 300 employees — and restructure the company accordingly.
MediaPost.com: Search Marketing Daily
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