Twitter dropped this week the 140-character limit on direct messages, while keeping the restriction on private tweets. The move comes after stalled earnings, signaling that Twitter has assessed limits to potential revenue from public tweets and is looking to leverage the next trend is social media: private messaging. Messaging aps like LINE and WeChat have enjoyed growing popularity in APAC in the past year; LINE users doubled to 560 million users. And Facebook has proven that the concept can be transported to the U.S. by establishing Messenger as a success.
But does Twitter have a chance at competing with Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp? L2’s latest study on Social Platforms reveals that it does, at least in the U.S. Twitter is one of the top three social messaging apps among U.S. smartphone users, with 24% of users naming it as their most preferred messaging app.
