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THE ENTREPRENEURS AT TWITTER: BUILDING A BRAND, A SOCIAL TOOL OR A TECH POWERHOUSE?1

Ken Mark wrote this case under the supervision of Professor Simon Parker solely to provide material for class discussion. The authors do not intend to illustrate either effective or ineffective handling of a managerial situation. The authors may have disguised certain names and other identifying information to protect confidentiality. Ivey Management Services prohibits any form of reproduction, storage or transmittal without its written permission. Reproduction of this material is not covered under authorization by any reproduction rights organization. To order copies or request permission to reproduce materials, contact Ivey Publishing, Ivey Management Services, c/o Richard Ivey School of Business, The University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada, N6A 3K7; phone (519) 661-3208; fax (519) 661-3882; e-mail cases@ivey.uwo.ca. Copyright © 2010, Ivey Management Services Version: (A) 2010-03-16

INTRODUCTION

On February 9, 2010, a technology analyst working for a large Canadian bank was looking at Twitter as part of his analysis for an industry note on emerging technologies. Twitter is a micro blogging service that allows subscribers to send “tweets” of 140 characters or less to their “followers.” It had been in the news as one of the hottest technology companies since Google and Facebook, and been cited as being an influential factor in socio-political events such as Senator Barack Obama’s U.S. presidential campaign, as well as in political protests in Iran. But Twitter’s user numbers had fallen to 24 million by the end of 2009 after having peaked at 29 million in mid-2009. About half of Twitter’s user base came from the United States.2 The analyst wondered whether the drop in users was a blip or whether it signalled that Twitter needed to revisit its marketing strategy. After all, the service had attained its current level of popularity based on... [continues]

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