How much chaos can one platform take?

It's been another mad week at Twitter HQ, where chaos reigns supreme.

Just when you think things couldn't get any crazier at Twitter, two major news stories break within a week.

Firstly, the Washington Post leaked documents relating to a whistleblower and his accusations about some extremely lax security processes at the company. Secondly, in a story that hasn't had as much mainstream pick up, The Verge reported that Twitter toyed with the idea of creating an OnlyFans-style adult content subscription product. A p*rn product in itself raises eyebrows; the story goes on to allege that the project was quietly sunsetted due to endemic problems with Twitter's ability to spot child p*rn on its platform.

Leaving aside the veracity of these claims, it's hard to think of another company that has lurched so dramatically from crisis to crisis as Twitter has. Even Meta seems to have a plan - no matter how ill-conceived it is to place all your money on the Metaverse and turn Instagram into a TikTok clone, it's still the semblance of a plan.

What's Twitter's plan? Hope that their lawsuit against Elon Musk succeeds, hand him the keys and say - "it's your problem now"? Use the inevitable legal settlement from the Musk saga and plough that money back into investing in something new?

Pre-Elon Musk, Twitter launched a series of products - Spaces, Twitter Blue (the premium Twitter), $uper Follows. Even during the Musk-related uncertainty, they continue to ship new features, with podcasts, Twitter Circle (essentially Instagram's close friends feature) and now an edit button launching during the latest media chaos.

Activist investors pushed for Jack Dorsey to be ousted precisely so the company could focus on growth and revenue. It would appear that, as we've seen with so many other user content-based platforms, safety and growth are mutually exclusive.

The question is, at what point do the safety concerns and the general sense of chaos scupper the growth ambitions? Given how influential Twitter is on media output and how well-used it is by celebrities and politicians alike, it's unlikely that Twitter will fail in the Vine/Periscope sense of the word. But one wonders how many scandals and issues of this nature it can navigate and still represent a credible option for advertisers.

Twitter is arguably too important to fail in the way Myspace did. As mentioned, nearly all of the UK's MPs and a large percentage of the media are not only on Twitter but represent some of its most heavy and influential users. The whistleblower's accusations may perturb them, but they're unlikely to make them reconsider their presence on the platform. Thanks to its open APIs, Twitter powers much of what we euphemistically describe as "social listening" (it should be called Reddit and Twitter listening). Again, while accusations of security lapses might be worrying, these services rely on Twitter so heavily that they cannot walk away.

And Twitter does still have those moments when it comes into its own. Boris Johnson's "will he/won't he" resignation fiasco drew millions back to Twitter, all desperate to keep up with a situation that felt like it was changing by the minute. No other social network makes you feel like you're watching tumultuous events alongside millions of other people.

But in an increasingly brutal digital advertising market, are these moments of relevance enough to keep advertisers away from the likes of Meta, Snapchat and TikTok? Especially given Amazon, Apple and a bunch of other companies are now opening up their ad inventory to offer brands and businesses even more options for their online spending.

One factor playing into Twitter's hands is how little organic reach brands and businesses currently receive from their owned profiles. Our analysis here at Teneo shows that the average organic reach for branded tweets is around 5%. In other words, a tweet without any advertising spend will reach only 5% of your followers on average. Like Meta's platforms, Twitter is a pay-to-play platform business.

There is also the fact that the latest scandals around Twitter can feel very same old, same old - plus ca change. How the company functions mirrors the platform's experience - absolute chaos. It's the chaotic nature of Twitter that keeps people entertained, that keeps the 25% of Twitter users responsible for 80% of all tweets coming back day after day, hour after hour. I remember back in 2009/10 when clients would say to me, "Twitter is just people talking about what they had for lunch". Twitter has moved on significantly in the past 12 years, with the chaos factor, accelerated by the crazy political climate, being the single biggest driver of that change.

How much chaos are advertisers and investors willing to take? If Elon Musk completes his takeover deal under legal duress, then all bets are off. For the time being, we'll keep a close eye on Twitter's Q3 earnings report (due at the end of October) to see whether the current news cycle affects Twitter's bottom line and whether there is such a thing as too much chaos.