Introduction
The United States of America went through a crazy political shift earlier this year. USA’s former president, Donald Trump, was banned from many leading social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Youtube.
Trump was known for his frequent controversial tweets. Undoubtedly, he was one of Twitter’s most problematic and prolific users. So how did his ban affect the micro-blogging network? Let’s find out!
A historic growth –
Twitter has comfortably surpassed the earnings expectations of Wall Street in the fourth-quarter of 2020. It witnessed an average of 5 million users joining Twitter daily. The micro-blogging network also reported 192 million monetizable daily active users globally for the fourth quarter.
That’s a rise of 5 million, from the Q3 when it was 187 million and 152 million in the early of the flummoxed year. Coming to the home country, Twitter said it saw a rise of 1 million monetizable daily active users in Q4, from 36 million to 37 million. By showing these numbers and stats, Jack Dorsey led social media to clarify that it doesn’t need users like Trump to keep growing. Twitter has announced that its current user growth surpassed the historical average of the last 5 years.
“Twitter is a platform that is obviously much larger than anyone topic or any one account. We have a global service. We are also not dependent upon just news and politics being what drives [usage on] Twitter.” – Dorsey said.
Future predictions –
For the first quarter of 2021, The Wall street forecasts Twitter’s revenue to be approximately $965 million. Even the micro-blogging giants have similar expectations. It expects the total earnings to be nearly $1.04 billion. It’s predicting to witness a rise of 20% in the daily users in Q1 in 2021. The number of global daily active users is expected to touch near the 200 million mark
Why Twitter banned Trump?
The fourth quarter of 2020 was the last period when the ex-president of the USA, having more than 88 million followers, was active on Twitter. After the violent attack broke out in the U.S. Capitol, which was reportedly caused by the pro-Trump supporters. Donald Trump’s tweets were accused of inciting such violence. Hence, his account was permanently banished.
There is no precise data about how much Trump’s presence in the micro-blogging network, but from the business perspective, having the former president could probably benefit Twitter (and cause controversies, of course!) Although it is too soon to comment whether Trump’s prohibition will have any immediate effect. But even Twitter is expecting that their growth will slow down after their massive growth in 2020.
Conclusion
It will be interesting to see whether reality runs parallels to Twitter’s estimations or if we are in for another surprise. Based on the things that have happened over the past year, the latter does seem possible. Until further events unfold, stay tuned!
