Twitter is very worried about Facebook as among other things it can make SMS status updates more available. Reading about SMS updates made me wonder about the differences in the mobile web experience across geographies.
While users in the USA and Europe get the mobile web experience via high end phones which run apps with various features and functionality it is not so in Africa, India and other developing economies of the world. Africa and India which are typically low end handsets markets where SMS’s are used to create the mobile web experience.
While the worries of Twitter about Facebook may or may not come true in the US, it needs to look outside the US for opportunities to ensure that it stays relevant and its not copied and then beaten by companies like Facebook which have a bigger muscle.
However for Twitter to leverage this opportunity before an African Twitter comes up it needs to do the following
- Organizational ramp up – a company with 70 odd can forget about Africa and India
- Product design – support for languages, English and related scripts would not work in India
- Partner – partner with handset manufacturers and operators.
Google already has announced plans for Africa.
No comments:
Post a Comment