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Twitter and its innovation practices
Twitter and its innovation practices
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Twitter
prepares the development of a new line of business based on the
exploitation of the data of its users, and I can not help but see the
reflection of innovation practices that the company has already become a
repetitive pattern: allow the development of an ecosystem of companies
that exploit characteristics of its operation, see which is the most
outstanding competitor , acquire it, and expel the others.
A
pattern that has been repeated with practically all the functions that
Twitter has been incorporating from ideas of the community of users or
companies that has been able to generate in every moment: for the
development of the app for each platform, for example, Twitter allowed
it to develop several in competition, finally acquiring one of them and
converting it into an official client. With the geolocalization, with
the inclusion of photographs, with the shortening of links, with the
insertion of video ... with many of the functions that we see today on
Twitter, the company has acted following the same strategy.
In
the present case, the pattern is repeated: For years, the company has
allowed to arising multiple companies dedicated to the analytics of
their data. Finally, in August last year, he acquired Gnip, one of the
competitors in that environment, for $134 million. After the operation,
the company has simply been leaving to up agreements with its previous
partners without renewing them: the last of these partners, DataSift,
will see their access to Twitter data disappear on August 13. And
finally announced that Gnip will be in charge exclusively for the
exploitation of these data, in what constitutes a proof of the reality
of big data as a business source.
So
far, all normal. Or in the case of Twitter, business as usual. What
this episode raises me, however, it is the sustainability of these
practices in the medium and long term: innovation on Twitter depends
largely on the progressive demands of its users and the way in which the
business community is looking for ways to satisfy them through products
that are built around the ecosystem generated by the company. On that
platform, the company performs a work of cherry-picking: Choose the best
option and acquire it. Some of these acquisitions have been completely
crucial in the company's future. From the point of view of innovation,
an impeccable practice that exploits its capacity to generate a
platform, an ecosystem that draws the attention of third parties. For
those who make the decision to develop activities on this platform, the
obvious finding of what a risky sport is: After creating and
consolidating your activity, or you are the chosen one and become part
of Twitter, which seems to be especially good at the time to raise
purchases without decapitalizing the company and retaining the majority
of its workers , or you only have a time until Twitter decides to throw
you and exploit that business itself.
Entrepreneurs
like Loïc LeMeur, who spent several years trying to develop products
around Twitter with seesmic and pivoting non-stop to adapt to that
changing platform, nothing new. But I do not think you have been eager
to try again in the same way. As a formula for innovation, the strategy
has definitely paid off. But could Twitter, in the future, find that it
alienated the base of developers and entrepreneurs to the point that, in
the face of these prospects for the future, companies that were willing
to gamble working on their ecosystem would not emerge?
This article is also available in English in my medium page, "Twitter and its approach to innovation"
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