Challenges and Conversations ahead of Twitter IPO

Twitter Inc. on Thursday revealed plans to raise up to $1 billion in a public offering, looking to cash in on a messaging service that has transformed public conversation but is still losing money and facing challenges attracting new users and advertisers.

Reference:  Twitter Reveals $1 Billion IPO Plan.

After the Facebook IPO fiasco last year, I imagine Twitter has tapped lessons learned and prepared carefully for its IPO.

Reference:  Twitter Reveals Long-Awaited IPO Plans With 215 Million Users

As reporter Tomio Geron noted, investors will probably skate past the figures in red, largely based on the figures in green.  They want to see growth, and they want to be confident that Twitter will keep growing.  But really these figures should make them think twice, before deciding to invest:  Twitter apparently had to spend much more in 2013, to drive a bigger topline.  Specifically, just as its revenues increased 60%, its net loss increased even more 75%, from 2012.

Besides performance matters, there is also social and cultural issues:

"They certainly have a lot of work ahead of them to get mainstream America to understand" how Twitter works, said Brian Solis, an analyst at the Altimeter Group.

For the longest time, I saw Twitter as an oddity:  I didn't quite know how to best use it, because it was unlike other social media.  I didn't like the 140-character limit, and described it as a digital ticker-tape of news, updates and comments.  Mainly a one-way forum, that is, instead of anything close to a two-way conversation.

Over the past year, however, I've discovered avenues of conversations which I've enjoyed and which have prompted me to be more active on the site:

• I hashtag (#) Blackhawks or Bears in the search bar, at game time, and I'm in that conversation.  The golden rule is, If I want others to respond to me, I must respond to them.  So while tweet stuff, most of what I do is retweet (RT) and-or respond.  So live sports events get a nod from me.  
• I attended a technology conference last year, and the Chair gave us the hashtag for tweeting real-time comments, queries and conversation.  It was actually quite fun to interact with people who I knew were in the audience, but could not place them anywhere.
• The Lead With Giants community has a weekly chat, and anyone can join with the proper hashtag, respond to the questions, and interact with each other.  It took me two chats to get into the rhythm of it.  But they prompt us to think quickly and write succinctly, which are actually good skills for leaders to have.  It's quite a spirited conversation, to be sure.

I've learned good ways to work with 140 characters.  I decide what topic to share - for example, a Forbes interview with a CEO - then plan a set of posts across social media.  I can write relatively long comments on Google+, LinkedIn and EFactor, but Twitter and XING have notable limits.  Still, I keep things at reasonable length.  Some posts are Twitter-size to begin with, so I simply copy-and-paste those comments.  When I do write lengthier comments, I can single out that key sentence or phrase I can tweet.   

Twitter is definitely a phenomenon, and management and staff will be on the spot to sustain topline, while carving out a bottomline, following the IPO.  Let's see how everything goes.

Thank you for reading, and let me know what you think!

Ron Villejo, PhD