Twitter's Death Has Been Greatly Exaggerated, Social Data Shows

Twitter Inc TWTR stock is in trouble, seemingly making new all-time lows every day.  A slide from over 50 to under 14.50 in less than a year is never a good look:

Is Wall Street Right?

Wall St. is focused on MAU's – monthly active users.  Analysts want to see growth in the number of people using the service.  They're worried that Twitter is failing to grow in terms of the number of people using it, especially when compared to Facebook's dominating performances.

From the LikeFolio app data, it looks like they're right.  Mention volume dropping generally means usage, especially new signup numbers, is dropping:

Reason For Hope

But volume of mentions is only part of the story.  How people feel about the product (sentiment) is often a leading indicator of usage.  And in Twitter's case, that's a very good thing.

In fact, Twitter's positive sentiment has just recently crossed into over 90% positive territory… which usually means people are enjoying the product and more importantly, are likely to encourage others to use it in the future:

More Than One Leg To Stand On

Another interesting thing in the social data is the huge impact that Periscope is starting to have for the company.  It's recently overtaken Vine as Twitter's #2 most referenced product (behind the core twitter service itself), and is gaining traction on a daily basis for both fun and professional use cases.  

Even corporations like Chipotle are tapping into the power of live-streaming video to an existing distribution network of interested consumers:

A Shift In Focus Coming?

A very vocal section of Twitter's users are worried that the company is moving away from its core value proposition.  But we see it differently.  We see a company with a "stalled" core product that people love, preparing for the next wave of innovation and use-cases that can help it expand its offerings and bottom line.

Twitter's product line and value proposition has shifted from "social network" to "real-time media" over the last couple of years, and it seems like CEO Jack Dorsey is getting the message.   After watching the disastrous earnings from LinkedIn– he better be! 

Playing Earnings

It's fully possible Twitter will try to shift focus away from MAUs and into media engagement metrics that highlight the potential it has as an ad-serving network, possibly with premium (and costly) options for its most valuable and aggressive clients.