It is no secret that microblogging site Twitter has a year to forget in 2016. It saw the departure of a number of high-profile company executives, has struggled toattract new users after plateauing at around 300 million active users, and has suffered a slow growth in revenue.
As a result of all this, the company has been forced to enter ‘cost-cutting’ mode, which has led to its workforce being trimmed down and some of its business operations being off-loaded, such as killing off popular short video-sharing platform Vine, which is due to be shut down forever on January 17th.
Twitter is hopeful that it can turn things around as we enter 2017, and some industry experts believe that the person to save the platform is new President-elect, Donald Trump.
Trump, who is due to take up the role of US President on January 20th, is one of Twitter’s most famous users and has grown his following from 2 million followers, to more than 19 million since he hit the Presidential campaign trail.
Trump himself is a fan of the site, and has described the platform as “like having your own newspaper company without the losses.” He has used it pro-actively to promote his campaign, but has also tweeted a fair few streams-of-consciousness, leading to some high-profile gaffes.
Although he may have been on a few online tirades that have gained him no fans, for Twitter, he is a marketer’s dream, as there is not a moment when someone isn’t talking about him, or his latest actions being reported worldwide. This has led many news reporters, and any interested party taking to the net and searching for @realDonaldTrump on Twitter to see for themselves what the man is up to. This can surely only be good news for Twitter.
Furthermore, with Trump constantly tweeting and discussing his love of the site, this can only get people talking about Twitter again, right?
Trump will also gain a secondary Twitter account when he becomes President, as the Twitter account for the President of the United States, @POTUS, will always stay with the current President. This will give Trump a new set of followers to use, amuse and bemuse.
With all of this in mind, Twitter could be one of the few companies to take advantage of the celebrity businessman’s ascent to the White House. With Trump, soon to become the most powerful man on the planet, holding Twitter in such high regard and viewing it as such an influential tool, Twitter could soon be rid of its troubles.
So, will Trump make Twitter great again? Only time will tell.
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