It was easy to get swept up in all the changes that Jack Dorsey is trying to make to Twitter. Some of them are small, some of them pretty major, but they are all in service of getting the struggling network back on its feet. It’s been a bit of a whirlwind.
Now comes a reminder that, oh yeah, there is a lot of work to be done. And this is going to be really, really hard.
Twitter’s stock fell 4.16 percent on Thursday, losing $1.01 to $23.31 a share. The reason that’s noteworthy is that is the lowest price it has ever closed at. In fact, in its entire now now more than two year life as a publicly traded company, it has never, at any point been that low.
It is now down over seven percent from $25.23 a month ago, and down 36 percent from $35.57 a year ago. Twitter has now dropped around 17 percent since Jack Dorsey was named CEO back in early October.
It has been trending down this way for a while; in August the stock ended trading under $30 for the first time ever, and except for a few days in October, has never been able to come back up.
The company had a $26 IPO price and debuted at $45 a share in November of 2013.
Of course this is not the news that Twitter, or Dorsey, want to hear right now. That does not mean, however, that his plans for the future of the company will not bear fruit.
Right from the start he said his goals would be “ambitious” and “bold.” So far they have included thelaunch of Moments, a feature that is designed to curate content by aggregating Tweets and photos from live events and breaking-news situations, something that Dorsey has called “a real, fundamental shift in our thinking.”
The company has started experimenting with reordering the timeline, and reports have also come saying the company is looking into breaking the traditional 140-character limit, which would allow Twitter users to publish long-form content to the service.
Beyond changes in features, Dorsey has also attempted to reverse years of animosity between the company and developers by reaching out to them and asking them to come back to the platform. He also gave a third of his stock in the company, which amounts to $211 million, back to employees.
Keeping employees and developers happy is important, but the biggest thing that Dorsey has done so far has been to, finally, start showing ads to logged out users, something the company has been talking about doing for over year.
This represents a big opportunity for Twitter. Average Monthly Active Users (MAUs) were 320 million for the third quarter. According to Twitter, the number of people who visit Twitter each month without logging in is 500 million, 56 percent more than the number of people who have accounts. That number also includes people who click on links to Tweets in Google search.
The move temporarily impressed investors, but it has not been enough. Honestly, if Twitter is going to survive, Dorsey better figure out a way to get them back on board as well.
Shout out to Re/Code for first noticing this.
(Image source: psychiclibrary.com)
