Perspective: Twitter has hired the tech world’s most savvy observers of young users to help the service recruit more young people and compete with TikTok.
Robinson is exactly the type of user Twitter is moving aggressively to court. Teenagers have flocked to TikTok in recent years, abandoning apps like Facebook and Instagram. Twitter is stuck somewhere in the middle.
When it comes to cornering the young market, TikTok is Twitter’s primary competition. The short-form video platform has exploded in popularity since launching in the United States in 2018 and has evolved from an app full of dance content and lip-sync videos to a robust social network that young people turn to when they want to comment on big issues and news events.
“The value I’ve seen in Twitter is that there are a lot of young people who use it that feel liberated by the lack of pressure to be super perfect, or have the perfect appearance,” he said. Sayman says that for every teenager posting on TikTok, there are countless more who want to express themselves but haven’t found the right format. “There’s always the group of kids that are cool and can go on TikTok and do a video and get a whole bunch of likes,” he said.