Twitter Entering the Fight to Compete with Snapchat

The popular social media application, Twitter, may be working on a new update in an attempt to compete with Snapchat. Many popular social media applications are updating to give sponsored content more visibility, Twitter may be working on the same thing. An article by Social Media Today points out Twitter may be working on a camera-first feature and may ultimately be working on changing the app from a text based platform to a video and picture based platform. Twitter is giving news content a higher priority within their app where they will have a breaking news module at the top of the timeline for current newsworthy events. I would imagine it is similar to the placement of Instagram's stories, instead of personal users creating stories, the content would be from sponsored organizations using Twitter. I hope the potential update will bring more of a focus to newsworthy events instead of being used for advertising for companies. There are already places on Twitter for companies to advertise and I think too much advertisement on a platform can ruin the user experience which should be the primary focus of any social media platform. A news focused section on Twitter may be useful for generating greater public awareness in the event of a disaster as it is unfolding. Ideally the news in the news section of Twitter would be accurate as opposed to just the accounts of people witnessing the event posting on their timelines.  A picture and video-based Twitter may also bring new users to the application, as Twitter is a social media platform people seem to either love the platform or hate the platform. With more visuals as opposed to text there may be the potential to move some people who don't enjoy Twitter to people who would use the application. 

As with any company or application it is important for them to continually expand on what they are offering, otherwise they will become old and other companies and applications will takeover. Although change is necessary the way these platforms choose to evolve will have a major impact on their future, a focus on advertising and sponsored content may lead to financial gains in the short term but if it causes them to loose users they may want to sell their company before it is not worth anything anymore. The world of social media is highly unpredictable and the future is never clear.