Twitter Case Study: Business Strategies and Decision Making Process

This report analyses and understands various business strategies of Twitter for the last few years which have lead them to a long-term success. It also discusses the strategic decision-making process of Twitter.

Running head: TWITTER CASE STUDY
Twitter Case Study
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Executive Summary:
This report is prepared to analyse and understand various business strategies of Twitter for the
last few years which have lead them to a long-term success. Twitter is a technologies company
and working in the social networking domain linking millions of people through sharing of ideas
and information. They have faced various competitive challenges in the market and taken
strategic decision to counter that competition and to become the leader in the respective segment.
In this report some of such strategies of Twitter Inc have been discussed briefly.

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Table of Contents
Introduction:....................................................................................................................................3
Business strategy analysis of Twitter in Ashridge Sense of Mission Model:..................................3
Purpose:.......................................................................................................................................4
Strategy:.......................................................................................................................................4
Behaviour Standards:...................................................................................................................5
Values:.........................................................................................................................................5
Strategic Decision making Theories:...............................................................................................7
Behavioural Decision Theory:.....................................................................................................7
Strategic and Emergent Decision making process of Twitter:....................................................7
Key Elements of Twitter’s Strategic Decision making Process:.............................................8
Conclusion:......................................................................................................................................9
References and bibliography:........................................................................................................10

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Introduction:
Twitter is a renowned technology and communication company having a global presence
and operating from their headquarter at United States. The main function of the company is to
allow their subscribers to share ideas, thoughts and views with millions of people instantly.
Unlike Facebook and other social networking business, their activities and services are quite a
different. Their main source of revenue is the advertisement in their networking site. They host
and publishes various advertisements in their social networking website which can attract
attention of a huge traffic all of a sudden. They were having a rapid growth in their business
since its initiation in the year 2006. After they came to the public for raising capital through the
IPO in the year 2013, they have experienced a slow growth in their business till 2016. In this
journey they have taken various important decisions and built various business strategies which
helped them to survive in the market and to become the market leader. Some of such strategies of
Twitter Inc have been discussed using some strategic models (Twitter Annual Report 2017).
Business strategy analysis of Twitter in Ashridge Sense of Mission Model:
Ashridge Sense of Mission Model is a type of business strategic model, which can be
used for formulating and analysing various business strategies. It explains the mission, vision
and long term objectives of the business organisation. It emphasises four key aspects of the
management, Purpose, Values, Business Strategies and Business behavioural standards. They are
having a defined objective and goals, which specifies their mission and vision, and through a
proper business strategy and behavioural values they are trying to achieve those mission and
vision of the organisation. In the following paragraphs of this report the mission and vision,

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purpose and behavioural standards of Twitter Inc have been discussed one by one classifying
them individually (Twitter Annual Report 2017).
Purpose:
Business organisations are having certain objectives, some of them are having profit
maximisation as their motive and some of them are having the wealth maximisation as their sole
objective. Purpose means the objectives of an organisation for its existence. It implies for which
the organisation has been established. The main objectives of business organisation are to earn
revenue through providing various services. The main purpose of Twitter Inc is to share
information and ideas to make the people aware about various products and services and news.
Besides having this purpose, the twitter Inc is a profit making organisation and having a profit
motive too. They make profit through advertisement in their social networking websites.
Strategy:
Strategy means the alter courses of actions for achieving the targets. It is the set of plans
and actions, which help an organisation to achieve their goals and objectives. Every organisation
should be having some strategies to manage their business activities and to achieve their
organisational goals and objectives. Twitter Inc also having some strategies and they have
implemented it in practice also to achieve their goals and objectives. Their main strategy is to
increase the community reach to increase their business operation and to gain a long term
success. Since 2009 they have experienced a decline in their number of subscribers and
shrinkage in their community network and it led to incur a loss for them. In 2010 onwards they
have changed their strategy and focused on paid and promoted twitter trends to generate more
revenues. Their change in strategy resulted positively and helped them to have a significant

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growth in their profit in 2013. They strategy helped them to increase their subscribers and
increase in the community (Twitter Annual Report 2017).
Behaviour Standards:
Behaviour standards are the code of conducts and behaviours of the employees of an
organisation. It also includes the relationship with the external stakeholders of the business
organisations. Therefore, the behaviour standards can be analysed and discussed classifying it in
two heads, one is Employee Behaviour and Company’s behaviours and relationship with the
stakeholders. Every organisation should have a good behaviour with the stakeholders and the
customers. It increases the trust and image of the business organisation. Therefore, the business
aspect of behavioural standards includes the customer relationships and relationships with the
external stakeholders. On the other hand, the employee behaviour includes the cods of conducts
the employees are following and their response towards the customers’ needs and quarries. A
good behavioural standard can help an organisation to achieve their objectives easily.
Values:
Value is the organisational thoughts and beliefs. Value sense comes from the ethics and
ethical codes of conducts. Every organisation should have some values and beliefs, which make
them superior from their competitors. It helps an organisation to act legally and morally to
achieve their organisational goals. Therefore, the value sense and values and beliefs help an
organisation to act ethically and to achieve their objectives without harming interest of any
stakeholders of the business. The twitter Inc is also having a strong value sense. They are having
a community standards and policies which restricts sharing of vulgar and spam in their social
networking website.

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Figure 1: Twitter’s mission and strategies in Ashridge sense of mission model
To achieve success every organisation should have a defined mission and vision and a set
of strategies. The mission, vision and strategies of an organisation can be classified and analysed
in the above four groups. These elements are purpose, values, strategies and behavioural
standards. All of these elements are interdependent. In the above graph, their interdependency
have been plotted along with their core points within the box. The main elements of those points
of the Twitter Inc have been included in it. It can be observed that, the company is having a
predefined mission and vision and with an efficient strategy and values they are striving to
achieve their objectives.
Purpose:CreateandShareIdeasfreelyStrategy:HugenumberofUsersandrevenuesthroughPromotedtweets

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Strategic Decision making Theories:
Strategy is the set of actions and plans that help an organisation to achieve their
organisational goals and targets. To make a strategy and to adopt it in real-time business
situation, various important decisions in time to time need to be made. There are various
strategic decision making model which can be implemented and adopted in a business
organisation successfully. There are some models called the behavioural decision making models
and also some models are there which are known as the emergent and innovative decision
making models. Some of such models can be analysed and discussed as follows (Marjanova &
Sofijanova, 2014).
Behavioural Decision Theory:
Behavioural decision-making model is the system of decision making and strategy
building based on organisational behaviour and values of the business organisations. The main
concept of the behavioural decision making theory can be analysed from two perspective, one is
normative and the other is descriptive perspective. The normative perspective focuses on the
values, mission and vision of the organisation and the descriptive perspective focuses on the
strategic decision making perspective and the operational activities of the business (Marjanova &
Sofijanova, 2014).
Strategic and Emergent Decision making process of Twitter:
Twitter is a technologies company operating in the field of communication and network.
Their main business is the operation and advertisement in their social networking website
attracting a huge traffic at a time. Twitter Inc have takes various key business decisions and built
their strategies in time to compete in the market and to be the market leader. Their strategic

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decision and decision making process can be discussed as under classifying them in various
heads and points (Ireland, Hokisson & Hitt, 2011).
Key Elements of Twitter’s Strategic Decision making Process:
 They analyses the number of their users and subscribers frequently, they calculates the
increase or decrease in their number of subscribers and formulates strategies to increase
the number of subscribers (Ahmed, Otieno & Karanja, 2014).
 They are having a good sales team continuously working towards increasing their service
experiences and customer reach.
 They are continuously focusing on innovation and improvement in their technologies,
services and business operation to have a long term sustainability.
 They continuously follows the prevailing government rules and regulations to operate
their business in a competitive market scenario (Ahmed, Otieno & Karanja, 2014).
 They are investing a significant amount of fund in their research and development
activities to make innovation in their services and business operation.
 They are having a predefined set of organisational values and beliefs, which always
helped them to make strategic decisions.
Twitter Inc takes into consideration all those above factors for making their decisions and
formulating their long-term strategies to compete in the market and to achieve a long term
success in their business (Ireland, Hokisson & Hitt, 2011).
Key points of their strategic decision-making process can be explained and presented
with the help of the following diagram, where the whole process is classified into Challenges,

ChallengesFaced:FallinRevenue,CustomersdisatisfactionProcessAnalysis:Assessnumberofusers,Activeunsers,Adengagements,DataSecurityandPrivacypolicyStrategicDecisions:Paidpromotedtwittertrends,Shortvideoads,Improveddatasecuritysystemandwelltrainedcustomersupportpersonnel.9TWITTER CASE STUDY
analysis and strategic decision. The steps are shown chronologically and needs to be followed
accordingly (Ahmed, Otieno & Karanja, 2014).
Conclusion:
From the above discussion and analysis, it can be concluded that, the process of strategic
decision making is the key for a business to formulate efficient and strategies to achieve the
organisational goals and objectives. Twitter Inc is also having some pre defined goals, mission
and vision and they have formulated certain strategies to achieve those mission and vision of the
business.
Figure 2: Strategic decision making process of Twitter

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References and bibliography:
Adam, A. K. (2016). Mission Statements in Higher Education. In Strategy and Success Factors
of Business Schools (pp. 25-38). Springer Gabler, Wiesbaden.
Ahmed, A., Bwisa, H., Otieno, R., & Karanja, K. (2014). Strategic decision making: process,
models, and theories. Business Management and Strategy, 5(1), 78.
Alexander, A., Walker, H., & Naim, M. (2014). Decision theory in sustainable supply chain
management: a literature review. Supply Chain Management: An International
Journal, 19(5/6), 504-522.
Cervone, G., Sava, E., Huang, Q., Schnebele, E., Harrison, J., & Waters, N. (2016). Using
Twitter for tasking remote-sensing data collection and damage assessment: 2013 Boulder
flood case study. International Journal of Remote Sensing, 37(1), 100-124.
Ellis, J., & Miller, P. (2014). Providing Higher Education in Post-modern Times: what do
university mission statements tell us about what they believe and do?. Research in
Comparative and International Education, 9(1), 83-91.
Hill, C. W., Jones, G. R., & Schilling, M. A. (2014). Strategic management: Theory & cases: An
integrated approach. Cengage Learning.
investor.twitterinc.com. (2019). Twitter, Inc. - Home. Retrieved from
https://investor.twitterinc.com/home/default.aspx
Ireland, R., Hokisson, R., & Hitt, M. (2011). The Management of Strategy-International
Edition. South-Western: Cengage Learning.

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Jovanov, T., & Fotov, R. (2014). Corporate mission: Much ado about nothing or essential
strategic step?. International Journal of Arts and Sciences, 170-182.
Koechlin, E. (2014). An evolutionary computational theory of prefrontal executive function in
decision-making. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological
Sciences, 369(1655), 20130474.
Marjanova, T. J., & Sofijanova, E. (2014). Corporate mission statement and business
performance: through the prism of macedonian companies. Balkan Social Science
Review, 3.
Morden, T. (2016). Principles of strategic management. Routledge.
Twitter Annual Report 2015. (2015). [Ebook]. US. Retrieved from
https://investor.twitterinc.com/financial-information/annual-reports/default.aspx
Twitter Annual Report 2016. (2016). [Ebook]. US. Retrieved from
https://investor.twitterinc.com/financial-information/annual-reports/default.aspx
Twitter Annual Report 2017. (2017). [Ebook]. US. Retrieved from
https://investor.twitterinc.com/financial-information/annual-reports/default.aspx
Van Knippenberg, D., Dahlander, L., Haas, M. R., & George, G. (2015). Information, attention,
and decision making.