Twitter Categorizing Itself as a “News” App on iOS App

The app ranks number 1 in the “News” category

 

It seems like Twitter is done fighting the social networking battle with Facebook and its family of apps. The company is now categorizing itself under the “News Category” on the iOS App Store, where it is ranked as number 1.
The micro-blogging website once ranked number 5 in the social networking apps segment; however, now it’s losing its grip in the industry. In its recent earnings, Twitter reported revenue of $595 million, against analysts’ expectations of $608 million. Monthly active users (MAUs) stood at 310 million — not an impressive figure given that they were 302 million a year ago.
The company has been struggling to increase its user base and protect its users from abuse and harassment on its platform for quite a while now. To that end, Twitter has set up a Trust and Safety Council to protect its users from cyber bullying. It also recently introduced a new feature that allows its users to flag accounts of users by attaching their tweets with the report.
Considering the fact that Facebook has 1.6 billion MAUs, way more than Twitter, moving into the news category seems like a wise decision. With this move, the company’s target audience has changed; from people who wanted to connect with each other to people who are looking for a convenient way to keep themselves up to date with news.

Interestingly, the company first hinted at this change last October, when it released the Moments feature on its platform. This feature enables users to keep a tab on the current events happening around the world. For now, Twitter has not made any official announcement yet. Also, the micro-blogging website has not made any changes to the Google Play Store; the app is still categorized in the “Social Networking” category. However, changes are expected on the Play Store soon. To maintain its ranking, the company will have to keep introducing innovative features because it won’t be long before other news app catch up.