The Reason Twitter Wants to Look Like Facebook: Your Parents | Business | WIRED

Twitter transformation time

"But the true brilliance here is that by unveiling the profile redesign — which will be rolled out to users in the coming weeks — Twitter may be able to appeal to new users without jeopardizing its existing base, as often happens when tech goes mainstream. That’s because so many of Twitter’s power users already bypass the profile page, and instead, manage their social media accounts through third-party apps like HootSuite.

Of course, if Twitter does succeed in becoming as user-friendly as Facebook, and becomes crowded with, as Blau put it, “ads and grandparents,” it’s possible, if not inevitable, that it will lose traction with some of its earliest devotees. And that’s okay. “It’s the future users who will drive the business forward. They’re the target for advertisers,” Blau says. “They’re different from the digerati and the people who flock to these networks early on. It’s the mass market that has the buying power. That’s what Twitter’s really after.”"

The Reason Twitter Wants to Look Like Facebook: Your Parents | Business | WIRED