'For years people had mixed up Twitter and Facebook'
'I visited the Taj in Agra and spent some time with the UP police. It was phenomenal to know how they are using Twitter, how it is an integral part of everything that they do.'

- Feb 20, 2018,
- Updated Feb 21, 2018 11:25 AM IST
Social media platform Twitter has turned profitable for the first time in the 12 years of its existence. The company reported a USD 91 million profit after years of negative revenue and user growth. In a conversation with Ajita Shashidhar, Matt Derella, Vice-President, Global Business Operations, Twitter, who was recently in Mumbai, said, "We finished 2017 with a credible momentum (17% growth) and we look at 2018 as a year of growth, and internationally, especially India, is where a large part our growth is going to come from."
Excerpts:
Why wouldn't they? I don't think it's a choice between one and the other. What Twitter does exceptionally well is that our whole platform is built around interests, so we are able to help brands to start with what their consumers are interested in and then work backward from there in terms of what their messaging could be. That's a fundamentally different model and its proven consistently to be more effective. In India it's proven that Twitter works 40% stronger in driving sales than other channels. The reason for that is our ads are more relevant and people come to this platform with the desire to seek information, so that leads to a better ROI. We see that in the data too. In the last quarter we saw an engagement on ads on parameters such as 'relevance' as a keyword was up by 7%, so our machines are really smart about catching the right ad for the right person at the right time.
Social media platform Twitter has turned profitable for the first time in the 12 years of its existence. The company reported a USD 91 million profit after years of negative revenue and user growth. In a conversation with Ajita Shashidhar, Matt Derella, Vice-President, Global Business Operations, Twitter, who was recently in Mumbai, said, "We finished 2017 with a credible momentum (17% growth) and we look at 2018 as a year of growth, and internationally, especially India, is where a large part our growth is going to come from."
Excerpts:
Why wouldn't they? I don't think it's a choice between one and the other. What Twitter does exceptionally well is that our whole platform is built around interests, so we are able to help brands to start with what their consumers are interested in and then work backward from there in terms of what their messaging could be. That's a fundamentally different model and its proven consistently to be more effective. In India it's proven that Twitter works 40% stronger in driving sales than other channels. The reason for that is our ads are more relevant and people come to this platform with the desire to seek information, so that leads to a better ROI. We see that in the data too. In the last quarter we saw an engagement on ads on parameters such as 'relevance' as a keyword was up by 7%, so our machines are really smart about catching the right ad for the right person at the right time.