Twitter downplays social element in App Store and repositions itself as a news app
Twitter has altered its classification in Apple's App Store, moving from the 'social network' category and into 'news'.
Twitter downplays social element in App Store and repositions itself as a news app
The change means that it will now be competing with the likes of BBC News and the Wall Street Journal in the app download charts, rather than social giants like Facebook, Snapchat and Skype.
Twitter joins Reddit as the only other large social network in the category, and the platform's decision to take a more prominent place in the news division follows on from rival Facebook's choice to shift its focus to video and conversational commerce in the form of chat bots.
Twitter is set apart from its competitors through the mark it has made on the media landscape – it has a reputation as being the home of real-time breaking news, with major stories like the November 2015 Paris attacks unfolding on the platform.
At the end of last year it launched curated new service Moments, enlisting a team of journalists to compile stories from the around the world as they happen. It also recently won the deal to stream Thursday night National Football League (NFL) games outbidding Verizon and Yahoo for the rights to secure its reputation as the place to be for live sporting moments.
Twitter released its first earnings report for 2016 earlier this week, with revenue coming below analysts expectations at $595m for the first quarter of the year.