Strategic Management Analysis of Twitter: Opportunities and Threats

This report provides a comprehensive strategic management analysis of Twitter, examining its approach to strategy formulation, including both deliberate and emergent strategies. It assesses the competitive environment facing Twitter within the social networking industry, evaluating the balance of opportunities and threats, such as competition from other social media platforms, the rise of fake accounts, and regulatory challenges. The report also delves into Twitter's strategic capabilities, including its valuable and rare resources. Furthermore, it explores Twitter's current strategies and potential alternatives for improvement, including the SAF strategic model, offering insights into how Twitter can enhance its market position and address the challenges it faces in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT

Contents
1.......................................................................................................................................................3
A) Evaluation of what make Twitter strategy formulation approach both deliberate and
emergent......................................................................................................................................3
b) Explain why the development of strategic management is important for the major players in
the micro blogging and social networking industry?...................................................................4
2.......................................................................................................................................................4
A) Analyze the competitive environment facing Twitter in the social networking industry.
Evaluate the balance of opportunities and threats.......................................................................4
B) Strategic capability of Twitter................................................................................................7
3.......................................................................................................................................................9
A) Current strategies of Twitter and range of alternatives in order to make improvement.........9
B) SAF strategic model.............................................................................................................11
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................13

1
A) Evaluation of what make Twitter strategy formulation approach both deliberate and emergent
Manager of Twitter is responsible for creating effective strategies for company so that it
can earn more profit margin and market share. Manager have make use of both deliberate and
emergent strategy approaches that have contributed in effective management of tactics and plans
of enterprise. Both approaches have some key difference and limitation that can be illustrated as
follows:
Emergent strategy: This strategy refers to a action that is developed with time when the
management of the company has not decided the mission and vision. This is the reason why it is
also known as realized strategy. It is set of action, behavior that is not consistent over time or
was not included before in planning of strategies as it had been suddenly added so that company
can gain competitive advantages. Manager of twitter continuously monitor or conduct research
of market in order to know or get information about recent preference and needs of customers
that helps in formulated better strategy and enhance its overall profit margin and market share.
As per emergent strategy Twitter is able to make changes in its application so that more and
more users are interested to be part of it for fun and enjoyment (Venkateswaran and Ojha, 2017).
Twitter is one of the social media platform which have been used by diverse individual to
connect with each other or share information by tweet or commenting on it. Managers have
makes various changes in strategies as per customers expectancy that have contributed in
increasing number of use of Twitter. Therefore some of limitation of Emergent approach used by
manager and leaders so that company can get competitive advantages is as follows:
It involves lot of time, efforts and money or sometimes it may be difficult for manager to
understand uncertain changes of external environment which can be act as threat to operation of
company. So, manager of Twitter need to invest continuous time, efforts to conduct effective
market research in order to accept external changes and effective achieve company objectives.
Deliberate Strategy approach: It is another approach that have been used by management of
Twitter as it have to deeply, strategically think on various aspect of business such as total budget
of financial year, strategies that will company use in future to attain its respective objectives.
Manager of Twitter make certain changes to key annual strategies that have been set by company
as per market so that various employees can easily or without confusion can put their efforts for

completion of task (Leiblein and Reuer, 2019). Manager of Twitter by planning in advance is
able to arrange sufficient resources for business and effectively aligned it with company goals.
Both leader and management of twitter deliberately analysis or evaluate previous information of
company such as total sales, revenue and budget in annual year. This approach is a top down
approach which states that it is better that planning is done or estimate is taken out before
making a decision. The focus of these strategies is solely on achieving goals that are specific.
On basis of outcome it takes appropriate decision for firm so that it can gain advantages over
other competitors in social networking industry. So, despite of so many use or benefits of using
deliberate strategy approached there are certain areas in which this strategy lacks. Such as:
Lot of time, resource are required by management to deliberate think about future strategies
which could be used by enterprise to enhance its overall market share.
b) Explain why the development of strategic management is important for the major players in
the micro blogging and social networking industry?
The development of strategic management for both the aspects that is the industry of
social networking and micro blogging is very important and it is because of the evolution of
strategies of marketing. In order to keep up with them they need to come up with developed and
innovative strategies and comply with this factor. There are a lot of changes in the market and
many companies use social network as well as micro blogging as a platform for promoting their
brand so that they can increase their awareness as this aspect has no end to reach. With the help
of this platform they can share every information such as strength and weakness with instant
access to it. One of the reasons that development is necessary is because of the evolution which
has made place to viral marketing. Other than this whenever companies wants to gain insight
they use these platforms to do it as people share their views about different topics which helps
them to assess their needs and wants and develop their interface and design of marketing scheme
on the basis of it. This helps the brand to leave a long lasting effect on them which they do not
easily forget and helps the company to make a sale (Kliuchnikova and Pobegaylov, 2016).
2
A) Analyze the competitive environment facing Twitter in the social networking industry.
Evaluate the balance of opportunities and threats.

Twitter has grown rapidly, providing a platform for sharing and receiving news in a quick
and timely manner. With over 340 million tweets being sent in a day, half a billion tweets per
day and a valuation of $16 billion, all we can say that Twitter is biggest and powerful social
networking and news site. It has captured a great market share. But in present times there has
been stiff competition in social networking industry. It has led to create war like situation
between companies operating in this industry. It (Koseoglu, 2016) is found that there are many
new companies emerging this industry and has created a great impact on it. for example- Tiktok,
pinterest, we chat, etc. has resulted in rising competition between firms. Hence, it has become
difficult for firms to sustain for long time within industry. There are many issues which have
been faced by Twitter such as the reputation of the company from other competitors is
downsizing every year and the reason behind that is the no. Of increasing spam and fake handles
on it which increases the chances of hacking. They have maintained an open platform which
gives everyone a right to speak anything and many times it leads to controversy which spreads
the negativity for the brand. They are facing difficulties in going international. Although they
have maintained operations in many countries but due to less manpower and different laws and
regulations they are facing difficulties in keeping up with it because of which they have not been
able to make progress in other countries which has wasted their resources and the clients they
have gathered in international borders does not have much potential in the market. Most
importantly the growth of Twitter is slowing down in a vast manner as the amount of losses is
increasing day by day and they are not in the path of growth which is making it difficult for them
to get the attention of investors. The management of the company is concerned about their rate of
growth as they have no rate of certainty for future which is why the rate of business is gradually
slowing down. So, in order to do so they are developing effective strategies to compete with
rivals. Similarly, twitter is also facing intense competition from other social media companies.
This has led to lose in gaining competitive advantage. The main rivals of firm are facebook,
instagram, tumblr, etc. they also provide same feature to communicate with other people.
however, there are some opportunity and threat identified (Gaya and Smith, 2016). It is as
follows
Opportunities

 Customer offering services- the company can offer services for communication within
organisation. For that they can develop a tool in it. in this way they can expand in this
untapped market.
 Twitter can integrate with other platforms as well in order to increase traffic on their
website. This will result in fulfilling gap within market and attracting more people to
use it.
 In present times Twitter moments is used as different platform. So company can use to
integrate and attract more people. with this they can increase traffic on website.
 By doing innovation in ads area company can enhance user experience. So, other
organisation can use platform to promote and market their products.
 Twitter can also enter in search engine business industry and support business activities
by offering them communication solutions and increasing revenues (Barros,
Hernangómez and Martin-Cruz, 2016)
 Company can open online store and provide virtual market place just like instagram is
offering to people.
 As firm is having an updated infra they can provide remote working stations for user
employees to work from home.
 They can also enter in music or video streaming services to expand.
Threats
 There is rise in increase in fake accounts and hacking incidents which has hampered on
brand image of company (Khosiev and et.al., 2019).
 High competition from Facebook and tumble is disrupting market value of company
 There are many new innovative social media companies emerging which is a threat for
Twitter to sustain in market for long term.
 Democracy like US and other country has restricted freedom of speech. Thus for that
they have banned Twitter to use within country like China.
 There are many regulatory laws which is forcing company to improve data security and
privacy. In case of data breach high fines and penalties are imposed on company.
 They have not been able to file profit since they began their operations in the market.

B) Strategic capability of Twitter
Valuable Resources-
Twitter has some sources such as allowing people to use their medium as a platform for
communicating and sharing news. With this people are allowed to share videos and pictures with
tweets which is a valuable aspect. Even with the valuable resources company has not been able
to gain competitive advantage for a long period of time. This is why they are not been able to
grab the opportunities and keep the measures safe from the constant threats in the market.
Currently the company is working on increasing the value for their customers so that they can
increase their share from 1 per cent and achieve growth so that they can sustain their market
(Fernandes and et.al., 2017).
Rare Resources-
These are considered as those resources which are possessed by only some of the
companies operating in the market. The resources that are valuable of the company some of them
are rare from it. The feature of sharing everything with tweet is valuable and rare as other
companies only allow sharing the status with normal captions. But it is twitter that has defined
new meaning to captions. They are working on gaining advantage over their competitors so that
they can increase their value (Favoreu, Carassus and Maurel, 2016). With the help of these
resources they can stand a chance to achieve competitive parity. Twitter uses these resources
with the resources that are common among their competitors. These resources are important
because they are difficult to find and implement in the company with success.
Imitative-
Resources that are valuable and rare help companies such as Twitter to establish their
market in the eyes of customers. It is assessed that these resources are difficult to find and more
difficult to imitate. The strategy used and launched by Twitter must be patent so that no other
competitor can imitate it and the way for achieving competitive advantage. On the basis of
evaluation it is assessed that if the resources of Twitter have casual ambiguity and social
complexity then they won’t be easy to imitate which is beneficial for the company. The aspect of
casual ambiguity states that there is a relationship between the resources of the business and the
competitive advantage which they have sustained. On the other hand social complexity resources

are socially complex which states that part of it can be imitated as if they are based on the
culture. This is why Twitter has to coordinate with everyone and maintain relationship with their
suppliers so that it can be kept secured.
Organized-
Twitter has kept their resources organized but the industry they operate in requires
constant change. If they do not keep them organized then it won’t make a difference that they
have competitive advantage or not. It is necessary in order to increase their share and value in the
market they need to keep their policies, processes, structure, culture and systems of management
organized so that they can work up to their potential and keep their resources safe. This way they
will be able to sustain their resources and achieve competitive advantage (Grant and Baden-
Fuller, 2018).
From the basis of analysis it has been assessed that the core competency of Twitter is
they work for different companies and people as a messenger so that they can promote their
brand and serve their message with interesting comments that gains the attention of the target
audience. It will be helpful if resources of the company are utilized in a right manner so that the
feed post of the company can improve and people still feel that it remains reliable and secure.
Other companies dealing in the same sector can learn from it and it is necessary they keep
making changes in their interface with upgraded features and reduce all the complexities so that
people who are not technology oriented can easily use this. This way they will be able to gather
more active users and with the help (Agwu, 2018) of upgraded and safe interface people will rely
more on it. This will benefit the company as more active users they have more they are earning
with dealing in brands and promoting. Although other companies must invest in the department
of R & D and marketing as this was the mistake Twitter at their beginning stage because of
which they were not able to generate profits. Also focus of the management of the company must
be on increasing the value of the brand so that people can trust it and rely on it. This way other
companies can increase their share in the market. If the strategies are implemented in the right
manner with proper evaluation of resources then company will be able to incur profits (Barney,
2017).

3
A) Current strategies of Twitter and range of alternatives in order to make improvement.
The current strategy of the company is to provide assistance and look out for brands so that they
can increase the use of their platform as they want to increase their visibility because of the
launch of new segment that is Twitter Next which will be totally used for marketing and provide
assistance in terms of advice to the owner of companies and partners of Twitter (Oboh and
Ajibolade, 2017). The management of the company believes that in order to cope up with the
needs of future they need to make changes in their structure and that is why they are coming up
with Twitter Next. They feel that with this they can satisfy the evolving needs of marketers. With
this will platform they will focus on conducting campaigns, promote the products and
communicate the messages. To make their way for future Twitter is partnering up with the
agencies of advertisement so that they can introduce themselves and their campaigns in the most
innovative assessments of brand. With their new venture the company will begin working on
gathering the insights of data that will be derived on the basis of tweets people will post on the
feed. This will help them to assess the strategic direction and promote the business through
which they can increase the level of their campaigns. Their strategy is to attract the business and
make them deal with the experts so that they can use their knowledge which will help them to
form the strategies through which they will be able to keep up with the trends of consumer and
increase the level of engagement (Akhtar and et.al., 2016).
TOWS Matrix-
Threats-
The company has serving in the market for over ten years and even then the strategies
implemented by them have not been successful. This has resulted in losses for the company
every year since they have started their operations. Other than this another problem that the
company is dealing with no. of fake accounts on their portal and this is a risky measure as they
can easily hack the account or steal the data of the company which will leave no value for the
company. Also the company is lacking behind in terms of innovative strategies against the level
of competition they are facing from other companies. This is affecting the business of the
company. Also the level of competition in the line of business is increasing and the reason

behind that there is no barrier to it and they are achieving success because of their unique
concept (Alnoukari and Hanano, 2017).
Opportunities-
The company has the opportunity through which they can open up the gates for being
used as a channel of communication they just need to make some changes. If it works they will
be able to generate high amount of profits. Other than this company can integrate their platforms
with other channels through which they can remove the gaps in their working. This way they can
increase and generate more traffic on their platform. Also Twitter shares a lot of information on
day to day basis which states that they have the option of opening up their own search engine.
They need to invest in the line of marketing and advertisements so that they can get the insight
through which they are able to improve the experience of users and this way they will get more
active users (Certo and et.al., 2020).
Weakness-
The company is not able to keep their visitors and account holders satisfied which are
why their rate of retention is low they loose interest in it too early. Also other problem is that
there are more than 300 million users which are active on Twitter but they just read the tweets
and views of another people. The platform is maintaining their business only from ten per cent of
users. They are not able to achieve growth in the market because they are not able to bring any
innovative idea which is making the audience getting the feeling of boredom. They need to
charge fees for their ad free page so that they can generate more revenue and improve their
business (Pederzini, 2016).
Strength-
Twitter has one advantage that they moved into this line of business when their was no
one else which helped them to establish their base of operations easily. Many of the people trusts
this brand because of its social prestige and use of celebrities as almost every who is connected
with social media has account on Twitter and they share their daily updates on which fans across
the world pass their views and comment. Also the company has been able to establish their brand
with the blue bird as everyone knows what it stands for. Company does not charge anything to

their account holders even for the ad free page. The interface of the company is simple which
easily attracts the users to join it (Ferreira, Mueller and Papa, 2018).
B) SAF strategic model
Formulating the strategy of the business is difficult which is making it difficult to assess the
strategy and its effectiveness. It is necessary that Twitter has criteria through which they are
working on an approach so that they can work on the basis of suitability, acceptability and
feasibility of each. It is necessary that strategy taken by the company meets with the required
level of criteria so that all of the options can be assessed and company can measure the rate of
success.
Suitability-
This aspect is believed to be the most important of this model and the reason behind this
is that it assesses that the strategy chosen will be as per the suitability and meet the requirements
made by business. Suitability is assessed on different mediums of criteria such as suitability of
environment, expectation and capability of suitability. The category which matches with the
level of suitable needs must be met further so that they can reflect on the needs of the company.
Twitter needs to measure the suitability by measuring the status of strategy that if or not they are
able to comply as strength of the company in an effective manner. Other than this strategy
chosen by them must be able to move across the difficulties which they recognized at the time of
analysis. The most important aspect that Twitter needs to analyze is that strategy must achieve
the goals of the business. In order to increase the business they need to come up with a strategy
which creates the buzz of the app and never let the audience lose their interest. They need to get
content on their page which is controversial and unexpected so that people are always interested
to be active on the page (Barbosa, Castañeda-Ayarza and Ferreira, 2020).
Acceptability-
This aspect of the strategic model is concerned with measuring the risk involved and the
rate of return while implementing a strategy of business which is done with the assessment of
taking reactions from a particular strategy. There are methods which are taken out on the basis of
expectations of stakeholders which is on the strategy that is evaluated with the benefits they will
be receiving on it. The benefits from it can be financial as well as non financial which depends

on the decision made by the stakeholders of the company. On the other hand in order to calculate
the return there are different methods available to it such as analysis of cost benefit, analysis of
profitability, analysis of real options and analysis of value perceived by the shareholders of the
company. With this risk are also evaluated so that aspects such as failure of strategy and losses of
finances can be weighed up by the management of Twitter. Company measures risk with the help
of impact made on liquidity, analysis of sensitivity and reactions of stakeholders on the strategy
(Kools and George, 2020).
Feasibility-
This aspect is concerned with making or breaking the strategy. It does not matter that
Twitter has resources or not, abilities and aptitudes are required in the process of implement the
strategy of success. This is the reason why this aspect is evaluated by predicting and analyzing
the flow of cash, undertaking the break even analysis and with this other financial tests. There
are other conditions which concerns Twitter such as the level of manpower, management and
equipment they posses so that they can form the structure and make the strategy implemented
successful. In order to implement the chosen strategy and make it successful it is necessary that
company ties up their hands with journalists and set them as the employees of the company so
that they can assist their manpower and use their machinery by utilizing the money in the right
area.
They are already coming up with Twitter Next which is to promote the brands and
conduct campaigns but if they make their platform as this many companies will be able to get the
thought process of customer as they will be sharing their opinions and point of views openly
which will help them to develop their products and strategies and achieve growth in the market
together (Siegel and Leih, 2018).