????投資者對于Twitter的前景依舊缺乏信心。Twitter第三季度財報顯示用戶增長速度放緩，這家科技公司的股價應聲下跌10%，盡管公司收入比2014年增長了58%。自6月份以來，Twitter僅增加了300萬新用戶，與競爭對手Instagram相比遜色不少——Instagram僅過去9個月便新增1億用戶，用戶總數達到4億。要實現收入與用戶數量的均衡增長并非易事。Twitter新任CEO杰克·多爾西的任務異常艱巨。但他至少知道如何提高公司的普及度。

????王者歸來？

????在體育和音樂界，復出是常有的事，但CEO復出的情況卻并不常見。多爾西希望像史蒂夫·喬布斯一樣，重新回到他一手創立的公司，試圖力挽狂瀾。多爾西在2006年參與創建了Twitter，是該公司首任CEO。但在2008年，他被另外一位聯合創始人埃文·威廉姆斯取而代之。2009年，多爾西組建了銀行卡移動支付平臺Square公司，現在依舊擔任該公司CEO——這一點也讓他飽受指責。

????2015年7月，多爾西重回Twitter，任臨時CEO，2015年10月獲得正式任命。他的前任迪克·科斯特洛曾經談及掌管一家上市公司的壓力，尤其是如何處理在股市預期刺激下產生的一些短期想法。如何在滿足投資者對公司短期預期的同時，確立一個長期的發展愿景，現在成為多爾西必須解決的難題。最初重返公司時，多爾西提出了一項旨在簡化Twitter產品的計劃，以幫助人們更容易理解，更愿意使用這個社交平臺。他表示，公司將重點“加大對Twitter、Periscope和Vine的投入。”

????問題在于，這項簡化工作是否以及何時能夠見到成效。實際上，Twitter的每月活躍用戶數量同比增長11%，達到3.2億，較上一季度的3.16億有所增長。但多爾西還有更多工作要做，并且必須加快速度。讓Twitter易于使用，是這家公司在擴大用戶基數方面面臨的主要挑戰。

????第三季度的收入為5.69億美元，同比增長58%，比預測區間高出900萬美元。其中90%來自廣告收入（5.13億美元，同比增長60%）。令人印象深刻的是，有86%的廣告收入來自移動廣告。第四季度的收入預測區間為6.95億至7.1億美元。然而，從每月活躍用戶人數這一標準來看，Twitter正陷入困境。投資者通常會用每月活躍用戶人數來判斷一家社交媒體公司的長期前景（因為這一指標可以吸引更多廣告收入）。

????Twitter的現狀

????推特的現狀濃縮在以下3個領域：新功能Moments，視頻，以及吸引中小企業的方式。Moments是Twitter推出的一款新產品，可圍繞用戶關注的實時事件，聚合有關的推文、圖片和視頻。這項功能會組織Twitter上最熱門的話題，內容由Twitter及其合作伙伴編制。多爾西表示，Moments代表了Twitter思維方式的根本性轉變——根據話題而不是事件組織內容，用戶可關注話題而不是賬戶。這款新產品充分體現了Twitter為了變得更易于用戶和廣告商理解所作出的諸多努力。

????為了宣傳Moments，Twitter在世界職業棒球錦標賽期間推出了第一款電視廣告。然而，這則廣告卻遭到部分Twitter用戶的反對，他們發現它過于復雜，不清楚它到底在傳達什么信息。這也顯示出Twitter所面臨的雙重挑戰：一方面，公司要通過簡化的界面來吸引新用戶，另一方面，現有用戶則希望現有服務能夠增加新功能。Moments已經開始提供廣告。但這項相對較新的服務還有許多問題亟待解決：開發者與廣告商是否會采用Moments，將其作為吸引現有受眾和新目標受眾的新穎方式？ Moments能否幫助Twitter擴大用戶基數？

????對于該公司來說，增加 “應用內體驗”是一個重要的發展領域。與Facebook的即時文章(Instant Articles)類似，使用戶停留在應用內，而不是通過超級鏈接跳轉到瀏覽器，是增加用戶駐留時間的一種重要方式。提高“應用內體驗”的結果是，服務的使用頻率提高，并且可獲得廣告商的更多關注。此外，隨著視頻內容消費量的增加，Twitter也在嘗試吸引廣告商的視頻內容和廣告預算。Twiter將在下一個季度發布更多相關產品，如采用Promoted Moments形式的新視頻功能。

????最后，Twitter有900萬中小企業賬戶，這是Twitter及其廣告商尚未充分利用的一條新營銷渠道。只要這些公司認為Twitter可以更容易、更有效地將他們連接到用戶與供應商，它們就有可能更愿意使用Twitter提供的服務和廣告選擇（例如推出粉絲專享促銷活動等）。扭轉一家公司的局面需要時間和精力，但留給Twitter的時間似乎越來越少，多爾西和他的團隊必須加大努力。他們必須在改善現有產品和提供新服務之間實現平衡。只有到那時，Twitter及其CEO才能實現收入與用戶的雙重增長。（財富中文網）

????本文作者索蒂里奧斯·帕羅蒂斯是沃里克大學戰略管理專業副教授。本文最初發表于《The Conversation》。

????譯者：劉進龍/汪皓

????審校：任文科

????Investors are still unsure about Twitter’s prospects. The tech company’s stock dropped by 10% after reporting low user growth in its third quarter earnings report, despite seeing revenue grow by 58% compared to 2014. The firm added just 3m new users since June – paling in comparison to rival Instagram, which saw users grow by 100 million to reach 400 millon users in the past nine months alone. Delivering on the equation of revenue and user growth is no mean feat – and the firm’s new CEO Jack Dorsey has a tough job on his hands. But he appears to know at least what it takes to boost the company’s popularity.

????The comeback kid

????Comebacks might be frequent in the world of sports and music, but not so in the world of CEOs. Dorsey is hoping to follow in the footsteps of Steve Jobs in returning to the company he co-founded to help turn its fortunes around. Dorsey helped launch Twitter in 2006 and was its first CEO. But he was replaced by Evan Williams in 2008, another co-founder of the company. Dorsey went on to form Square Inc, a business platform for card payments on mobiles in 2009 and remains its chief executive – something that he has been criticized for.

????He returned as interim CEO in July 2015 and the job was made permanent in October 2015. His predecessor, Dick Costolo, spoke of the pressures involved in running a public company – particularly, dealing with the short-term thinking fueled by stock market expectations. Satisfying short-term expectations in a firm that also needs to build a long-term vision is now the battle Dorsey must fight. When he first took back the reins, Dorsey laid out a vision to simplify Twitter’s product offering – to make it easier to understand and more approachable to people. He said it would focus on “big bets across Twitter, Periscope and Vine.

????The question is if and when this simplification will begin to deliver. The number of monthly active members did actually rise 11% year-over-year to 320 million and saw a slight rise from 316 million in the previous quarter. But more work needs to be done – and at a higher tempo. Making Twitter easier to use is the key challenge the company faces to increase its user base.

????The Q3 revenue of $569 million points to a rise of 58% year-on-year, $9 million above its forecast range. Of this revenue about 90% came from advertising ($513 million, an increase of 60% year-on-year). And an impressive 86% of the total advertising revenue was mobile-based. The forecast range for Q4 is $695 million to $710 million. Yet, in the metric of monthly active users, which is often used by investors to judge the long-term prospects of social media firms (as it helps attract even more advertising revenue), Twitter is struggling.

????Twitter’s moment

????Three areas encapsulate what is happening at Twitter at the moment: Twitter’s new Moments feature, videos and the way it targets small and medium-sized businesses. Moments is a new product that organizes tweets, pictures and video around live events that users can choose to follow. It features the best stories happening on Twitter, prepared by Twitter and select partners. According to Dorsey, Moments represents a fundamental shift in Twitter’s thinking – organizing content by topic instead of timing, where users follow topics live instead of accounts. This sums up the current efforts to make Twitter easier to understand for both users and advertisers.

????In an effort to boost its popularity, Twitter aired its first TV advertisement to showcase Moments during the World Series Baseball tournament. The ad created a backlash from some Twitter users, however, who found it complicated and were unsure of the message it was trying to convey. This vividly shows the dual challenge Twitter has of engaging both new users through a simplified interface and current ones who want extra functionality from the service it already provides. Advertising is already offered within Moments. But as this is a relatively new service, there are still questions to be addressed: will developers and advertisers adopt Moments as a novel way to reach out to current and new audiences? Will Moments help Twitter increase its user base?

????Increasing the “in-app experience” that Twitter offers is an important area of development for the company. Similar to Facebook’s Instant Articles, keeping users inside the app instead of having hyperlinks send them onto a web browser, is an important part of keeping users engaged in their services for longer. The result is more frequent use of its service and more attention by advertisers. And, with the volume of video consumption on the rise, Twitter is trying to attract the video ad budgets of advertisers. In the next quarter there will be more related products released, such as new video features in the form of Promoted Moments.

????Finally, Twitter hosts 9m small and medium-sized business’ accounts that are a new marketing channel that Twitter and its advertisers have yet to fully utilise. If these businesses view Twitter as a way to connect to their users and suppliers easily and more effectively, then they might be more willing to use the array of services and advertising options Twitter is offering (for example, exclusive promotions to their followers). It takes time and effort to turn a business around. And it is at this precise moment, when time seems to be running out, that Dorsey and his team need to step up their efforts. These efforts need to strike a balance by improving current products and offering new services. It is only then that Twitter, and its CEO, will start delivering on both revenue and user growth.

????Sotirios Paroutis is an associate professor of strategic management at the University of Warwick. This article originally appeared on The Conversation.