Category: Twitter

Introduction

The practice or the science of transmitting information from one party to the next especially through an electronic means is called communication. Communication is inevitable. It takes place in everyday life whether the people involved in the process are close to one another or far away from each other.

Also, it takes place consciously or unconsciously. Communication can be verbal or non-verbal. Long distance made it difficult for individuals to communicate. This, as a result, led to the invention of technology that would enable messages to be relayed over long distances. Twitter as form of communication is more appealing than telegraphy (Fang, 2012).

Differences

Electric telegraph is an ancient system of communication that has since been obsolete whereas twitter is a current micro blogging and a networking social system of communication service. Electric telegraphs and signals were conveyed from one locality to the next using wire as a medium of transmission (Robert, 2013).

It is this signals that were translated into meaningful messages. The electric telegraph came after the non-electric telegraph which Claude Chappe invented in 1749. The non electric telegraph used sophomore which is a flagbased alphabet. The system was visual and relied heavily on a line of sight to communicate (Loretta, 2008).

Samuel, F.B. Morse invented the electronic telegraph. In order to convey the message, he initially used thirty five wires containing gold electrodes. He plunged the wires into water transmitting the message on the receiving end via electrolysis. The message was enabled by the amount of gas that that came as a result of electrolysis. Morse later investigated with electromagnetic indicators in the mid nineteenth century.

He got funds from a congress that saw him through with the telegraph idea (Mary, 2013). Characters sent via a twitter message are called tweets. This was an invention from an undergraduate student at the University of New York, Jack Dorsey. His first idea was using a short text message to communicate to a small group of individuals. He created twitter in March of the year 2006 and was launched in July the same year (Vasellaro, 2008).

While telegraphic information is retrieved in the form of writing in a paper, twitter is a type of communication that takes place in the internet. For one to send telegraphic information, they must have a telegraphic machine. The message is written by the sender of the message in a paper after which it is telegraphed to the receiver who also must be able to access the machine.

Twitter, on the other hand, relies on the internet. One is only required to log into their tweeting account to view ‘tweets’ form their followers. This can be done on a computer or via an internet enabled mobile phone (Robert, 2013).

While twitter requires membership, sending a telegraph does not require one to be a registered member. Telegraphic means of communication does not require one sign up for an account in order to send or receive information.

With a telegraphic machine, one is able to send information to anyone so long as they have the telegraphic machine. One can also read information sent to them without being a registered member Twitter on the other hand requires one to register as a member for one to view or post messages for others to view (Mary, 2013).

Telegraphic form of communication was not flexible and convenient as compared to twitter which is flexible and convenient. Telegraphic machines are not found everywhere. One has to get them from a designated location like in a post office. This makes the process time consuming and less efficient.

Twitter, on the other hand, is faster as internet is easily accessible. One can ‘twit’ via their mobile phone, tablet or a cyber café. One can ‘twit’ while travelling, having dinner, when they are about to sleep, first thing in the morning when they wake up and even in the toilet (Robert, 2013). Such flexibility was impossible with the telegraph.

Telegraphic form of communication is conventional and less attractive unlike twitter which is attractive and easy to understand. Telegraphic information is written on a paper in black and white. It is less attractive and can prove to be difficult to understand sometimes because it has no illustrations in the form of a video or photographs.

Twitter, on the other hand, uses motion pictures and photographs as well as videos that keep the readers entertained. These attributes enhance the comprehension of the message. Twitter also offers its users the option of sending messages in different formats, styles and lengths. The telegraph was more restricted (Mary, 2013).

Whereas twitter information transfer takes place instantly, telegraphic information does not take place instantly. When using the telegraphic form of communication, one does not get a feed back as soon as they send the information (Tom, 2009). This is because a process must take place before the receiver of the message corresponds to the message.

Further, the long distance that one has to travel to access the machine also delays information. Using twitter on the other hand is an instant means of communication. A click of a button and the information is read by the receiver and replied instantly for as long as both the receiver and the sender are on the same site (Neil 1985).

While telegraphic means of communication can be used to relay any amount of written information without limitation twitter has a limit to the number of characters that can be sent. In the telegraphic means of communication, one can write as much information as they please and the information will reach the receiver just as sent. It gives the sender of the message a chance to express themselves in writing without limitation on the information to be sent (Loretta, 2008).

As a result, it is appropriate for the formal type of communication. Twitter on the other hand has restriction on the number of character sent to the receiver. The maximum number of characters that the sender can send is 140 only. This limits one in expressing themselves (Standage 1998).

Twitter can be used for advertising while the telegraphic means of communication cannot be used to advertise. Telegraphic communication technology uses written information only and has no tools for formatting.

This makes it difficult to advertise. Furthermore, telegraphs are intended for few receivers. Twitter, on the other hand, is appropriate for advertising. Many individuals access the internet causing to reach a wider market. The site also provides tools that enable users to reformat their information thereby making it more attractive (Vasellaro, 2008).

Telegraphic means of communication is not only used to relay messages but can be put into other uses like the telegraphic money transfers, a feature that twitter does not have. The telegraphic machine was reinvented and is able to perform other functions.

Western Union and Money Gram are the largest money transfer organizations which came into operation the same year that telegraphs came into operation-1851 (Tom, 2009). Twitter cannot be used for money transfers because it has not been designed to do so, furthermore, many would not consider it safe as millions of people access the site (Robert, 2013).

Similarities

In addition, there are a number of similarities between the two. First, both telegraph and twitter are means of communication. In both, there is a sender, a medium of communication, a channel of communication and the receiver. They are both used to relay information.

They both have the same format of communication which is written message. The first message transmitted by a telegraph was “what hath God wrought” while the first message sent via twitter was “just setting up my twttr” (Loretta, 2008). The two gadgets are unlike phone, which send voice messages.

In both means of communication, the sender of the message has to write or post written information which has to be transmitted to the receiver through a medium. The receiver then reads the message, understands, interpret the information then respond back in the form of a written message to the receiver, who was initially a sender (Neil 1985).

Both telegraph and twitter are used to relay messages over long or short distances. Telegraphs started in the form of cables that were connected from one city to the next in 1838. Morse demonstrated the gadget by guiding an indicator through wire in Morris town. He later secured funds from a legislative body that assisted him mount a demonstration line in the middle of Baltimore and Washington DC (Tom, 2009).

It was unmanageable to hide the wires below the ground and had to hang them from pole to pole. It took a long time before telegraphic cables were put through the Atlantic Ocean to connect the whole world.

Twitter also uses internet cables to communicate worldwide. The use of telegraphs and twitter has made the world a global village. For example, somebody in the United Kingdom can easily communicate with somebody in Africa clearly and easily by twitting or via a telegraph. They were both invented for one basic need-to communicate (Robert, 2013).

Both telegraph and twitter started on sketchy grounds before developing into the wide networks in later years. People have come up with better ideas that have seen the technology grow from a frame to a wholesome system that ensures efficient and effective communication.

Their introduction got positive responses from people who contributed positively towards their growth. Both can be accessed by any individual who wishes to use them. There are no restrictions as to who can use the technology in terms of social class or age among others (Mary 2013).

Both have been used to relay important messages. During the civil war, Associated Press used a telegraph to dispatch information to various relevant offices. AP collected presidential poll results in1848 using a telegraph for the first time that saw Zachary Taylor secure victory in the presidential race.

President Abraham Lincoln state union was transmitted via telegraph. The contemporary world today has seen presidential and parliamentary campaigns carried out on twitter among other social networks (Vasellaro, 2008). Technology keeps upgrading from one decade to the next. Twitter is an upgraded form of technology that has made communication easy and enjoyable making it highly preferred to telegraph in the contemporary world (Vasellaro 2008).

References

Fang, I. (2012). Alphabet to internet: Media in our lives (2^nd Ed.). Kansas: Rada Press.

Neil,P. (1985). Amusing ourselves to death: Public discourse in the age of show business. Viking: Elisabeth Sifton Books.

Standage, T. (1998). The remarkable story of the telegraph and the nineteenth century’s outline pioneers. New York: Walker and Company.

Loretta, O. (2008). Peek-A-Boo World. New Jersey: Paulist Press.

Tom, S. (2009). The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century’s On-line Pioneers. London: Bloomsbury Publishing.

Vasellaro, J. (2008, October 27). Twitter goes mainstream. The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from online,wsj.com/article/SB22461906719455335.html.

Mary, B. (2013, March 30). The history of electric telegraphic and telegraphy: The beginning of an electronic communication inventors. History 1800. Retrieved from about.com/od/tstartinventions/a/telegraph.htm.

Robert, M. (2013, March 30). The invention of telegraphs changed communication forever: A communication revolution wired the world in the 19^th century. History 1800. Retrieved from about.com/od/inventioninnovations/a/telegraph01.htm.

Introduction

Organisations explore new avenues in order to keep their employees updated on the recent needs in the market. Using Twitter to train employees is cost-effective and efficient. Employers can request employees to join professional networks that discuss current market dynamics.

The Twitter Company that has approximately 2,000 employees in offices around the world offers useful tools for organisations to encourage their employees to work towards achieving the strategic business goals and objectives.

Employee motivation via social media occurs by including Twitter in the marketing objectives of an organisation. An organisation has to set out clear guidelines on social media usage in order to make employees’ engagement on social media beneficial to the firm. In terms of motivation, both positive and negative reinforcements are helpful to employees.

Learning and Development using Twitter. Update Employees on New Developments

In keeping up with the new technology in Learning and Development (L&D), employers will appreciate the need for inclusion of social media within organisations. Employees will be able to follow tweets on changes that affect their operations at the workplaces. Learning and development has been effective in making businesses remain relevant in the present competitive and dynamic market.

This culture requires that organisations should employ creative, innovative, and self-motivated individuals who like meeting new challenges. In addition, there should be need for employees’ training in order to learn the art of sharing any information that they have and they think can affect business operations in any way through re-tweets (Murrell & Meredith 2000).

Evidently, using Twitter in leaning and development makes it easier for organisations to gain competitive advantage over their competitors in the market. Employers should change employees’ perceptions or views on Twitter from a social tool to a professional development tool (Hart 2010).

In addition, an organisation can create a learning and development account on Twitter, which all employees ‘follow’ from their personal accounts. In this aspect, the learning department will update employees on new developments that require immediate adoption in their mode of operations.

With high number of current employees having Twitter accounts, organisations find it easier to initiate learning networks for their employees (Bozarth 2011).

Employees have to keep daily connection with professional bodies that deal in their lines of operation. Using live chat sessions and backchannels at conferences, employers will be able to train their employees how to work towards satisfying needs of their customers, as well as maintaining friendly relations among themselves.

Motivation and Reward using Twitter. Reinforcement

Employee motivation and reward forms a core component in increasing their satisfaction levels within any organisation. Organisations can use a scheme were they tweet the name of ‘Employee of the Week,’ and through re-tweeting, the employee gets motivated to produce more and better quality work with the aim of appearing again on the company’s Twitter account (Nohria, Groysberg & Lee 2010).

When an employer fails to meet the target, the company can publish his/her name as a form of negative reinforcement so that he/she can change by working hard to achieve high performance. Engaging employees in marketing on social media helps in advertising a company to large markets, as they will re-tweet information of the company to pools friends.

Once they follow the company’s Twitter account, tweets from the company will frequently stream on their accounts, thus improving the market base of the firm. A company can offer to give incentives to employees whose re-tweets bring legitimate productivity to the company.

For example, if the company gets new clients from an employee’s re-tweets, it is necessary to give that employee some rewards for the lucrative deal on Twitter. Performance-based incentives are crucial in making employees understand their tasks and expectations.

In this aspect, spot bonuses, commissions, and compensations-based on salaries and performances motivate employees at their workplaces. Twitter, as a social network platform, is useful in keeping organisations and employees updated on the current market trends (Craik 2012).

With employees joining workplaces intrinsically motivated, it remains the role of the employer to engage and appreciate employees, as well as provide authentic leadership to direct employees towards attaining the objectives of the firm.

Employee Recognition Programmes

The current global and dynamic market forces businesses to use social networks to engage their employees in daily operations. At the same time, firms have set out their visions and values in key social media sites in order to provide cohesive work environments, which are set on the organisational cultures.

Organisations having employee recognition programmes register higher performance than those that lack such programmes. Reward in business is predicated on the basic premise of the enterprise’s “ability to pay” and, therefore, the underpinning driver is the profitability of the business and the value of the contribution of the stakeholder (Deeprose 1994).

A company can set monthly or yearly rewards for employees who manage to bring in more customers to the premises. At the same time, the company should give such employees privileges to use Twitter account while at the workplace.

However, they must operate under strict guidelines to limit reduction in productivity. Since rewards can also be intangible, such as inform of praise, the HR department can initiate the use of online badges in which the tagging of employees’ names become visible on the company’s Twitter account.

This move makes these employees to feel unique among their colleagues, thus resulting to motivation to other workers to achieve the same status (Jenkins 2012). Notably, employees who win such recognition on Twitter will tend to work hard in order to maintain the same status, hence increasing the productivity of the company.

Use of badges in social media has been widespread, as the practice helps in setting goals for most organisations. Rewards can be useful in recognising an employee for participating in any company event. Such moves motivate employees, as they fulfil an employee’s desires and psychological needs.

In using social media recognition, firms can easily produce high profits as employees acquire proper understanding of the company’s requirements to recognise an employee.

Development of High Work Esteem

With the high rate of technological development, employees tend to use social sites like Twitter and Facebook to connect with their friends, connect with customers, conduct business transactions, share work-related content, and connect with co-workers (Nichols 2011). In order to motivate employees to develop high esteem for work, employers must develop social networking policies that allow the use of Twitter for employees.

Factually, most clients have Twitter accounts and, therefore, such moves will fulfil employees’ social needs. Employers should encourage employees to use Twitter, and follow each other, as well as giving their opinions on the companies’ accounts.

In this direction, employees will be able to give productive ideas to the company, thus necessitating the need for rewards and appreciation (Bell 2012). Even though some employers are still uncomfortable with incorporating social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook in their operations, these sites are effective in HR training and development, as well as corporate motivation.

List of References

Bell, E. 2012, Using Social Media to Motivate Employees and Build a Community. Getsatisfaction Blog. Web.

Bozarth, J. 2011, Using social media for workplace learning, Using social media for workplace learning. Web.

Craik, K. 2012, Social Media Tool that Encourages Employee Motivation, Business View USA. Web.

Deeprose, D. 1994 How to recognize & reward employees, AMACOM, American Management Association, New York.

Hart, J. 2010, Social Media for Working & Learning, ‘Social Media for Working & Learning’. Web.

Jenkins, A. 2012, About Employee Motivation & Reward Systems, Small Business. Web.

Murrell, K. L., & Meredith, M 2000, Empowering employees, McGraw-Hill, New York.

Nichols, J. 2011, Motivating Employees through Facebook, Forbes. Web.

Nohria, N., Groysberg, B., & Lee, L. 2010, Motivation in Today’s Workplace: The Link to Performance, Strategic Human Resources Management. Web.

Characterizing Twitter’s business model

The business model employed at Twitter Corporation seems to lack a proper definition, a problem that many analysts have debated over the last five years. In fact, analysts have criticized the company for lack of a clear business model since it was launched, despite having one of the largest social sites in the modern world. From the reading, it is clear that the company’s business model has a focus on chance, where the managers express interest and then follow a certain group of people who have registered as members of the social site. In this case, a person who joins the site as a member is included as a new member of a wider family of customers and is given the opportunity to follow certain things or people.

It seems that the world of these customers is interested in certain things or people, and it is a chance to find them on Twitter. People join the group thinking or hoping that there, they will find who or what they want to find. It is all about information availability, which is again determined by chance. the company merely advertises the product and hopes that as many members as possible will join and bring with them a wide range of information, which will then attract other customers to the site. Therefore, although there is no clear business model, apparently, the business model the company employs seems to rely heavily on serendipity.

If Twitter is to have a revenue model, which of the revenue models available would work?

It is obvious that the company cannot attempt to charge an amount of fee on new members who join the social site. This is likely to distract the process of registration and reduce the number of people joining the social community. Secondly, the company cannot charge some fee on sending messages or “tweeting” because this will be almost the same as charging some registration fee. Therefore, the only option that can work best for the company is to determine a model that will help it obtain funds from other areas. A better method is to focus on Web and Mobile Revenue Models. In this case, it is suggested that Twitter focus on Promoted Content as its revenue model.

In this model, the company will be charging some advertising fee on companies, organizations or individuals who seek to advertise or promote their business on the social site. Just before joining the site, such customers will be required to deposit some amount of money determined by the nature of the advertisement they want to place such as the size of data it contains, the number of pages it wants to use on the site, location of the customer and the period it will remain active on the site. The role of the company will be to ensure that there is a large number of active members on the social site in order to convince the advertisers that their products will be promoted once they place an ad on the social site. On the other hand, the advertisers will be seeking to follow a large number of people on the site by inviting them to “like” or “follow” the company’s profile.

What is the most important asset that Twitter has, and how could it monetize this asset

As a social site, the freedom of joining the social community at Twitter is the strong point for the company because as many people or groups will be joining as new members every day. As it stands, Twitter’s large numbers of members who have registered as members of the Twitter community make an important asset to the company. Given that the company finds it difficult to obtain revenue from charging members on registration, it is important to turn this community into an asset with which it can attract online advertisers

What impact will a high customer chum rate have on Twitter’s potential advertising revenue?

A high customer churn rate implies that there is a large number of people seeing an ad placed on the social site. Thus, companies will be assured that their ads will reach as many people as possible on Twitter.. In fact, online advertisement requires a company or individual to ensure that as many people as possible will see the advertisement on their screens. The strategy is to ensure that an ad runs in a website or search engine with a large number of daily visitors. Twitter’s large community is therefore an asset because it will provide the advertisers with an assurance that their website have one of the largest visitors every moment, giving them an opportunity to ensure that as many people as possible see an ad. The advertisers will also be expecting to obtain a large volume of messages as replies and suggestions from the social community on Twitter, which will be an indication that the promotion is progressing as required. In other words, a promoted revenue model will seek to obtain revenues from advertisers who seek to promote their business online. These will include celebrities and companies that seek to enlist a large number of “followers” and “following” as their potential clients.

Online Branded Communities

The current globalized environment that has no limits, especially when it comes to technologies and the Internet, forces brands to be innovative in reaching their audience, interacting and promoting a specific product or service. While the majority of companies engage with their customers via social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Instagram, some brands prefer to take an alternative route and create a branded community, where people will be able to interact with each other based on their love for a brand. Branded communities, unlike regular social media, can take many forms and can influence how customers interact within these communities. Furthermore, some social media are unreliable in the way they function or change the layout; such changes often leave users unsatisfied (Lithium 2).

Owned online communities matter because a brand can take full control and push its agenda to customers. For this reason, Sony Playstation decided to create its community (Playstation Community) that offered gamers a platform, on which they can connect and interact. One of the most interesting ideas is letting users create zones based on their interests in games or the support they need in resolving game-related questions (Hong par. 9). Sony invested in creating a community to get feedback from customers, providing instant support, and encouraging gamers to interact with each other.

Playstation Community is connected with the brand’s channels on social media such as Twitter and Youtube, so there is a possibility to engage with the content created both by users and the brand. Most notably, user-created content is one of the key components of the community, especially with the new features introduced into the PS4 console, which allows customers to record and upload clips directly from video games.

Allowing customers to share their gaming experiences with others is beneficial for the company is expanding the community as well as strengthening the base of loyal clients. Therefore, the main advantage of Playstation Community is “virtually unlimited capability and scale in user-generated content” (Hong par. 6), which is very entertaining to gamers, valuable, and effective for promoting purchases. Sharing experiences about different games offered on PlayStation has also been made possible with the help of a Playstation Forum, composed of various threads on different topics.

For example, there is a FIFA 17 thread, where users rate players, get information about game pre-orders, share their points, and discuss other topics related to the game. By creating separate themes for users to discuss, the company managed to develop small communities within a large community that shares different interests in their preferences in gaming.

With the advantages of the Playstation branded community come some minor faults that can be improved in the future. For example, despite offering gamers a unique way to communicate and share experiences, Playstation Community cannot boast about its large user base, although there are millions of people playing the console. The number of responses in forum threads is quite low, so there is a massive challenge for the company to attract more users and engage them in the conversation. This can be done by offering customers special offer codes that will give discounts for registering in Playstation Community.

Apart from engaging brand enthusiasts into Playstation Community, it may also be a good idea to pay more attention no ‘non-committals’ and ‘prospects’ who can then move up the ladder to become brand admirers and brand enthusiasts (Kalman 2). For now, Playstation Community is a place for brand enthusiasts who care about every detail of the gaming experience and are excited to share their opinions with others.

There are, of course, some brand admirers that want to become more engaged in the community or may have some questions they need to ask the support team. However, non-committals and prospects are potential customer segments that should be investigated by Sony marketers to move them from “the periphery to the center” of the brand community (Kalman 2). It is worth mentioning that prospects are potential customers that are considering choosing a specific brand; therefore, the company should first make sure that they choose the Playstation brand over others and then start engaging with the branded community.

On the other hand, the management can take great advantage of brand enthusiasts, who are willing to refer other customers to the brand. “Refer a friend” bonuses may be beneficial for both the brand and loyal customers, since engaging more people to the community will expand the user base, increase revenue, and give loyal users a platform for interaction. Lastly, the branded community should be under the control of the brand itself because offering too much control to users may result in a ‘rebellion’ or damage to the company’s image.

Overview of Project Assignment

Developing a new service, product, or an application for Playstation is not an easy task. However, since this project is targeted at underlining the importance of branded communities, a new service will also be associated with them. Because engaging more customers in Playstation Community is the key task, it is proposed for the management to develop a service that will reward brand enthusiasts for referring more clients to forums with threads on different topics. On the other hand, it is important to have full control over the service to preserve the community and make sure that the company operates within the framework of its core values and principles.

Bonuses and reward points will enable all customers to refer more friends to the Playstation Community regularly since getting a good deal on expensive games is something that any gamer would like to do. It is the job of a brand community manager to assign bonuses to activities performed within the community. For example, referring a friend to a community will give a user -$5 when purchasing a new game with a promotional code while constantly referring friends and making sure that they register and start engaging in discussions or contacting the support may give the customer some permanent advantages in gaming purchases.

Rewarding clients with bonuses will require some changes in the community promotion tactics and an effort to put more focus on advertising Playstation Community on social media to make sure that all marketing efforts align with one clear strategy.

“Refer a friend” bonus is a widely used practice employed by many companies for broadening the spectrum of customers and creating a loyal community, which is interested in interaction and mutual support. For example, “refer a friend” is used in the Warcraft games; it allows the players’ friends and families to experience the Starter Edition of the game free of charge. Therefore, such a practice is not only beneficial for loyal users who get points and bonuses they can spend on their gaming purchases but also for new customers that can play a new game for free.

One of the most important points to mention is that the referral program should be developed with easy-to-understand terms and conditions as well as the option to redeem acquired points quickly. Even though the brand community manager should make sure that terms are protecting the company’s interests, putting many restrictions on customers will only place them at risk of leaving the community.

Lastly, it is important to mention the types of bonuses Playstation Community users may receive. Although there is a variety of rewards available, the most effective ones are referral bonuses, referral discounts, and ‘refer one-get one’. A referral bonus allows Playstation Community users to get a cash bonus for referring a friend while a discount gives a set percentage off from the next game purchase. The ‘refer one-get one’ method is especially beneficial in cases when a customer is planning to make a new purchase.

By referring a friend to the community or to buying a game, a brand enthusiast may be eligible for getting a game for free. Thus, the company may use its loyal customers as an advantage when it comes to the promotion of a branded community. With establishing trusting relationships with clients and offering them bonuses for inviting others, Playstation Community will become a massive platform for gamers to interact, share experiences, upload games, discuss related topics, and give direct feedback to the support team.

Works Cited

Hong, Pat. 10 Exceptional Examples of Brand Communities. 2015. Web.

Kalman, David. Brand Communities, Marketing, and Media. 2009. Web.

Lithium. Online Community: The Heart of Social Strategy. 2012. Web.

Financial analysis and forecasting is one of the spheres of human activity that has benefited a lot from the introduction of modern technologies. However, this process was not quite a smooth one as it required a number of important changes that transformed the field and made specialists adapt to the new conditions. First and foremost, there appeared a new source of financial information besides business publications, scholarly research, and financial reports of business organizations. Different stakeholders now have access to a number of valuable digital resources.

First and foremost, the Internet and various new portals provide relevant financial reports, which is especially important for investors as they have to be aware of all the changes that happen in the market and can affect their practice. Furthermore, it would be fair to claim that such sources are more valuable than paper reports since they are updated regularly and contain data that is still up to date and can influence the decision-making process of various businesses.

There exist social media resources that allow analyzing the choices of consumers and market fluctuations in connection to social trends. This is especially helpful in financial forecasting as consumption choices are usually irrational and have to be studied in order to understand what ideas customers hold about different purchases, industries, brands, prices, and other things that make them opt for one product or service while neglecting the other.

We have explored how the financial data found on the famous social network Twitter can be used by a financial forecaster for creating the reliable and valuable basis for financial decision making and identified what particular benefits the network has. We discovered that density of messages makes postings useful and effective and they provide dynamic financial information free of redundancy.

The research was particularly focused on timing as the most essential aspect of financial operations. All financial players strive to complete their operations in the most accurate and beneficial time, which means that they need data as soon as it appears. When professionals make use of online resources, it is necessary to gather and process large quantities of incoming information in order to extract the most valuable facts.

Semantic frames that underlie textual data have to be identified to understand the major concepts. Social networks are particularly important in this aspect as they serve as massive sources of information and provide quick updates that are necessary for financial forecasting. In Twitter, a specialist can identify users whose opinions are the most accurate and reflect all the changes in the stock market. With the help of Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), a researcher can process a series of determined topics and compare them to the sentiment in the shared Twitter content.

In this research, we collected data collected from Twitter and Google in order to prove that Twitter data has more predictive power about financial stock markets than blogs and financial news. We conducted three searches including

1. top gainers
2. top losers, and
3. general search on stocks.

We collected the data of almost 10 000 tweets from January 1st, 2017. Twitter corpus was collected using Python program bypassing Twitter API limitations.

We found out that most of the tweets are irrelevant and contained unnecessary information, which meant that filtering was required. Using UNIX text tools, we removed URLs, retweets, usernames and stopwords and applied sentiment analysis. It was discovered that in comparison to Google, tweeters are less likely to tweet about losses than gains. There are not many negative words as well as words for highest losers’ words, almost nothing.

There are two sections that are words that appeared in tweets about ”Gainers” and “Losers” companies. In “Ganiers” graph has words with positive and neutral scores and words with only positive scores. Words with positive and neutral scores clearly shows that there are more positive words and the sentiment scores are much higher.

We also found out that companies that are highest gainers and losers in stock and with highest rising stocks are companies with technology, which conveys a societal trend at the moment.

Twitter is a useful tool for reaching marketing objectives because social media is beneficial for companies of all sizes. It crosses several demographic boundaries and disseminates the company’s message, enabling the organization to reach a wider audience (Ward, 2022). Many successful worldwide companies employ Twitter and hashtags for their marketing campaigns. For instance, Coca-Cola, with its #ShareACoke or Domino’s campaign of #letsdolunch. As it can be seen, many companies fit Twitter into their marketing strategies and employ its possibilities and global reach. This suggests that most brands have the chance to increase brand awareness and create a significant amount of user-generated content using Twitter hashtag campaigns.

Hundreds and thousands of tweets can be grouped together using hashtags, which are searchable identifying words or phrases. This is a beneficial approach to make the material more noticeable to people outside followers. Most active Twitter users are familiar with several well-known hashtags, for instance, #ThrowbackThursday (Zote, 2021). To contribute to discourse or promote their products, many brands cling to pressing issues using hashtags. Twitter is available for free, however, there are lots of advertising possibilities. Promoted tweets, one of the most helpful features, allow businesses to reach more consumers and boost engagement (Zote, 2021). Except for the “promoted” label, these advertisements appear to be regular tweets. Additionally, Twitter offers a variety of marketing tools that businesses may use to enhance their marketing operations (Ward, 2022). For instance, using Twitter Amplify, an organization can post live content videos (such as a television stream) that company can connect with a business or sponsors. Delivering material to a specific audience can assist a business in reaching users beyond current subscriber base.

References

Ward, S. (2022). What Is Target Marketing?Small Business. Web.

Zote, J. (2021). Twitter hashtags: How to find and use the right hashtags.Sprout Social. Web.

A Recent Event That Showcases a Change at a Larger Level

The selected change event refers to Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter, Inc. and the cultural shifts that followed it. In April 2022, the renowned entrepreneur initiated the deal with the social media giant by offering $44 bln for the company (Jia & Xu, 2022). The deal was completed in October, making Musk replace Jack Dorsey as the company’s CEO and resulting in a series of controversial decisions to reset Twitter’s culture.

Analysis of the Event

The Change’s Focus and Intended Results

The change effort initiated by Musk was focused on forcing rather than promoting a cultural shift to make the workforce more self-demanding and obedient. In his e-mail to the employees, Musk clearly stated his expectations regarding Twitter 2.0, requiring employees across various hierarchical levels to commit to “the hardcore culture” or leave their jobs (Ding, 2022, para. 1). For the intended results, Musk hoped to make the culture less employee-centered and emphasize excellent performance and dedication to improving Twitter. This was evident in his attempt to make the workforce prepared for “working long hours at high intensity” (Ding, 2022, para. 2). He anticipated creating an organizational culture of obedience and hard work and demonstrated the producer archetype in terms of leadership signatures by stating his commitment to tangible results and development rather than the team’s interests.

Factors Leading to the Change and Making It Worth Doing

Musk’s successful acquisition of the key decision-maker’s status has led to the change, and his detailed perspectives of Twitter’s tech-related drawbacks as a platform have made it worth doing from his perspective. Musk became the CEO and removed the previous board of directors, thus eliminating competition from the other internal sources of power, which has made drastic changes possible (Ding, 2022). Musk’s understanding of the change’s importance revolves around Twitter’s ability to revolutionize content evaluation processes to allow free speech, increase the platform’s transparency, and improve bot detection/banning (Ding, 2022; Milmo, 2022). Being effort-intensive, all these plans require the Twitter team’s ultimate dedication to meeting stricter performance standards and total agreement with Musk’s vision.

Political/Strategic/Cultural Challenges during Change Efforts

Musk’s rather disorganized change process could have promoted various issues, many of which can still emerge in the nearest future. Political challenges that might have occurred during the change process include more strained India-U.S. relationships resulting from Musk’s decision to fire over 80% of Twitter employees in India (Bond, 2022). Dedication to getting rid of staff members from a different culture might reveal the propinquity effect and Musk’s determination to create stable networks based on their members’ proximity. This very act could have resulted in cultural challenges, including the remaining Indian workforce’s growing negative attitudes to their U.S.-based counterparts for doing nothing to challenge Musk’s chaotic staff policy decisions. In terms of strategic issues, removing opportunities for remote work and mass firings could have undermined Twitter’s human resource strategy by lowering the subjective attractiveness of joining the team, thus leaving various crucial positions unfilled.

How the Process Has Gone

Regarding how the process has gone so far, Musk has already instrumentalized his formal status to initiate mass firings, thus eliminating open resistance to a new culture. Competence and likeability are leaders’ personal assets in promoting their vision, but Musk has demonstrated neither of them in his chief decisions. Eliminating the opportunity to work from home and the plan to leave up to 50% of the employees jobless have caused intense negative reactions from the workforce and the global business community (Ding, 2022). Change efforts have sought to remove barriers to Twitter’s success, as understood by Musk, such as the previous leadership’s excessive employee-centeredness and commitment to people rather than results.

Decisions that Have Worked Better/Worse

The initiative that has worked better in terms of forcing Musk’s vision of Twitter’s culture refers to structural changes to suppress the plurality of opinion and achieve managerial hegemony. Musk dissolved the social media giant’s board, firing the leading financial, legal, and operational decision-makers and bringing his like-minded attorney and fellow tech investors to the team (Ding, 2022; Milmo, 2022). Despite undermining the balance between leadership and management by removing the experts with sound knowledge of Twitter’s business environments, Musk has successfully eliminated the potential sources of intraorganizational resistance. Since Twitter’s long-standing decision-makers elicit more trust and are seen as more competent and likable compared to the new CEO, Parag Agrawal and other fired leaders could have inspired internal opposition to Musk’s culture-changing policies.

Musk’s initiatives related to policy and non-leadership staff have worked much worse due to violating organizational change logic and spreading fear among the workforce. Change theories, including Kotter’s eight steps, advocate for the graduality of change, which is absent in Musk’s case. As opposed to Kotter’s perspective, in which the vision is communicated thoroughly and taught by example from the guiding coalition, Musk’s approach is chaotic and creates uncertainty for the workforce (Ding, 2022; Milmo, 2022). Instead of establishing a coalition with much experience in operating social media platforms, Musk has invited over fifty coding specialists from Tesla, which is a totally different market, to join the team (Ding, 2022). Along with the VUCA world approach, addressing the volatile speed of change forces requires a clear vision (Antonacopoulou, 2018). The speed with which Musk has initiated changes to work-from-home policies and demanded total agreement with the new culture reveals his ignorance of the graduality concept. Over 3,000 Twitter employees have changed their LinkedIn status to “open to work” (Ding, 2022, para. 15). Such reactions reveal a climate of uncertainty and fear, which is not conducive to success in resetting culture.

References

Antonacopoulou, E. (2018). Organisational learning for and with VUCA: Learning leadership revisited. Theory and Practice Management Journal – Leading Brazilian Journal, 8(2), 1-26. Web.

Bond, S. (2022). Twitter’s chaos could make political violence worse outside of the U.S. NPR. Web.

Ding, J. (2022). Elon Musk attempts ‘hardcore’ culture reset at Twitter. Will employees buy in?Los Angeles Times. Web.

Jia, Q., & Xu, S. (2022). An overall analysis of Twitter and Elon Musk M&A deal. Highlights in Business, Economics and Management, 2, 436-441. Web.

Milmo, D. (2022). What changes has Elon Musk made at Twitter and what might he do next?The Guardian. Web.

Introduction

Technological growth has led to the emergence of social commerce, which is an “evolutionary type of business that is mediated by social media and mobility” (Al Saud & Khan, 2013, p. 59). Today, virtual shop owners use social media like Twitter to market their products in Saudi Arabia. Research has shown that Twitter helps business operators to build the business image, connect with other business operators, and strengthen ties with customers. The number of business operators who use Twitter to market their products and services in Saudi Arabia is growing.

Al Saud and Khan (2013) allege that even though Twitter is mainly popular among online consumers, small, medium and big businesses profit from Twitter’s capacity. The majority of small business operators use Twitter accounts to link with potential customers in Saudi Arabia. Besides, Twitter serves as a virtual store for some business operators. Researchers should conduct further research to determine why, who, and how business operators benefit from Twitter. The study will assist researchers and business owners to appreciate the benefits of Twitter in e-commerce.

Purpose of the Study

The purpose of this study is to find out how Twitter has made it easy for people to establish and manage businesses in Saudi Arabia. In addition, the study will assess how Twitter helps business operators to interact with customers throughout Saudi Arabia. Currently, a majority of entrepreneurs use social media for marketing their products.

Hence, this study will evaluate how Twitter has contributed to the growth of small enterprises in Saudi Arabia. The project is intellectually worth doing because it will help scholars to understand what makes entrepreneurs use Twitter. Besides, the study will enable intellectuals to know the usefulness of Twitter in e-commerce and open room for further research.

Thesis Statement

Today, Twitter has enabled small and medium enterprises to market their products and services across Saudi Arabia. Indeed, the number of virtual e-shops continues to increase as entrepreneurs keep on understanding the benefits of Twitter in e-commerce. Twitter has made it easy for entrepreneurs to run their businesses through the establishment of virtual stores. Entrepreneurs do not require having physical stores to keep their products. The research will test a number of questions to understand how Twitter has contributed to the growth of small and medium enterprises. It will seek to determine how entrepreneurs use Twitter to execute business transactions. Additionally, the research will identify the advantages of using Twitter and its effectiveness.

Literature Review

Social commerce is gaining popularity among small and medium enterprises despite it being a moderately new trend. Development of Web 2.0 technologies, online groups, and e-business opportunities has facilitated social commerce. Therefore, the inclusion of social media like Twitter is what distinguishes a social business situation from the average e-commerce situation. Al-Husain and Mirza (2014) allege that the premise of social business is “wide-ranging such that it can include the exchange of opinions, ideas, sentiments or services” (p. 34).

In addition, it can combine offline and online business activities by incorporating a mobile business, e-commerce, and brick-and-motor business. Entrepreneurs use Twitter to rate and review clients. Besides, they use Twitter to create and manage online communities. Twitter has helped entrepreneurs to create a trusted environment where clients can freely share their experiences and give recommendations on what business operators should do to enhance their services (Al-Maghrabi & Dennis, 2011).

According to Askool (2013), business operators have exploited the internet and social media to a level that no one would have fathomed. As a result, development in social media has significantly altered marketing activities. The introduction of social media like Twitter and Facebook has eradicated the conventional buyer/seller relationship. Social media has enabled customers to relate and confer with one another instantaneously. In addition, Twitter has allowed small business operators to create brand awareness. Entrepreneurs send numerous affirmative images of their enterprises on Twitter, therefore creating awareness among potential customers.

Burton and Soboleva (2011) allege that Twitter is a potent marketing tool that helps entrepreneurs to reach innumerable customers and minimize marketing costs. According to Neergard (2005), business operators use Twitter because it helps them to get feedback from customers. They believe that salesmen are dishonest. Hence, entrepreneurs prefer Twitter since they trust that it offers unbiased feedback.

According to Park and Oh (2012), Twitter has over 500 million users. Unlike Facebook and other social media, any person with a Twitter account can access all information shared by other users. Hence, information shared on Twitter reaches many people relative to other social media. In Saudi Arabia, many small business operators use Twitter to market their products and services. Patino, Pitta, and Quinones (2012) argue that Twitter improves the level of “interactivity in communication between businesses and customers” (p. 235). Increased interactivity enables customers to learn more about a business, thus enhancing their likelihood to buy from an enterprise.

Research has shown that a majority of people who own smartphones use Twitter. Consequently, most business operators have realized that Twitter offers an efficient and reliable conduit of reaching their customers. Research has proved that consumers who receive information about particular enterprises through Twitter are likely to visit and buy from the enterprises.

Wang and Zhang (2012) argue that some customers avoid social media because they do not trust web providers. Hence, they fear to share critical information or exchange money through social media. According to Wang and Zhang (2012), it is hard to build trust in social media due to a lack of physical contact. Trust is critical for the success of e-commerce since it eliminates uncertainties. Nevertheless, a majority of entrepreneurs who use Twitter to market their products claim that they do not encounter challenges.

They build trust with their customers through constant social interaction. Business operators create web interfaces on their Twitter accounts that enable them to share intimate information with customers, thus building trust. The web interface eliminates suspicion among the customers and makes accept to purchase goods online. Indeed, entrepreneurs have managed to use Twitter to influence the buying behavior of many customers.

Methodology

Explanation

The purpose of this study is to determine how business operators use Twitter to market their products and reach potential customers. Moreover, the study intends to assess the advantages of using Twitter among small and medium enterprises. In addition, the study will evaluate the effectiveness of Twitter in reaching potential customers. The study will rely on quantitative data gathered from small and medium business operators in Saudi Arabia.

A total of 250 business operators who own virtual shops will be required to answer numerous questions within a period of four weeks. Questionnaires will be sent to participants through Twitter, and they will be expected to send back their responses through the same channel. Since no one will be available to assist the participants, the questions will be open-ended to enable them to elaborate on their answers.

Research Instrument

The study opted to use questionnaires to gather data from 250 participants. The questionnaires focused on three critical areas. First, they sought to establish the degree of adoption of Twitter by small and medium business operators. Second, participants were required to highlight the benefits of using Twitter to market products. Third, the questionnaires sought to determine the effectiveness of Twitter in running virtual shops. The use of questionnaires was reliable since all questions were open-ended. Besides, researchers ensured that they did not use ambiguous questions that may confuse the participants.

On the other hand, researchers guaranteed the validity of information gathered by ensuring that they only involved business operators who are already using Twitter to sell products. Hence, the participants were expected to answer questions based on experience. The data gathered were calculated and examined through descriptive statistics. Researchers computed mean, frequency counts, and percentages to determine consistency.

Population

Many business operators use virtual shops for marketing their products and services. Hence, researchers had a significant pool of entrepreneurs. A total of 600 entrepreneurs were identified, and 250 participants selected randomly from the pool. Researchers preferred to select the participants randomly to ensure that all were given equal chances to participate in the study. Out of the 250 members, only 112 members participated in the study. The rest did not send back their answers even after accepting to participate in the exercise.

Findings

According to the findings, at least 90% of the participants were female. The findings indicated that more females than males engaged in small and medium enterprises in Saudi Arabia. It might be attributed to the high level of unemployment among women in the country.

In age distribution, 44.64% of the respondents aged between 18 and 25 years, while 43.75% aged between 26 and 35 years. The percentages showed that Twitter is popular among youths in Saudi Arabia. Besides, the majority of those who use Twitter for business are educated. At least 73.96% held a bachelor’s degree and above.

N.B.: The percentages were rounded off, and hence they may not add up to 100%.

The majority of participants claimed that they benefited from Twitter in four ways. It helped them to attract more customers and increase their sales volume. In addition, they alleged that Twitter helped them to build a strong relationship with customers. It also helped in business development by selling novel products and services. The four benefits were included in the research questions, and participants requested to state their degree of concurrence with each of them.

The majority of the participants said that they firmly concurred with all the benefits. The study required participants to indicate if Twitter was effective in facilitating business activities. Over 40% of the participants claimed that Twitter was efficient in running business activities. Besides, many participants argued that a majority of customers preferred to use Twitter to purchase products.

Discussion and Implications

The findings indicated that the majority of females used Twitter to market their products. They showed that Twitter had become an alternative source of employment for women in Saudi Arabia. However, the study could not confirm if females used Twitter due to a lack of alternative forms of employment. The fact that the majority of business operators who used Twitter to sell products were educated is an indication that Twitter is most popular among the intellectuals in Saudi Arabia. Hence, there is a need to enlighten the uneducated group on the benefits of using Twitter and social media to transact businesses.

The number of small business operators who use Twitter in Saudi Arabia is still small. Many entrepreneurs are yet to understand the benefits of using Twitter to run a business. Hence, there is a need to educate the public on the benefits of using Twitter to manage the business. Besides, more women should be encouraged to participate in social commerce as an alternative source of income.

Conclusion

The research has offered a general idea of how entrepreneurs use Twitter to manage their businesses in Saudi Arabia. The majority of the business operators fall into the digital generation. These are people who are conversant with technology. The study found that business operators use Twitter due to numerous benefits. For instance, it helps entrepreneurs to expand their businesses and reach many customers. In addition, most participants agreed that Twitter is useful in business management.

Moreover, some participants alleged that customers have confidence in conducting business transactions through Twitter. However, some customers are reluctant to do business with strangers. Therefore, entrepreneurs create web interfaces on their Twitter accounts that help to build strong relationships with clients.

Recommendations

The study focused on a small number of entrepreneurs. Hence, future research should focus on a large number of participants so as to come up with conclusive findings. In addition, future studies should focus on other scopes of Twitter usage. Moreover, the research should cover other social media platforms. To improve the study, one should incorporate qualitative data. A comparison between qualitative and quantitative data helps researchers to come up with dependable results.

References

Al Saud, A., & Khan, M. (2013). Role of social media in brand development in Saudi Arabia. European Journal of Business and Economics, 8(1), 47-63. Web.

Al-Husain, D., & Mirza, A. (2014). Twitter and the opportunity for small business entrepreneurs in Saudi Arabia. International Arab Journal of e-Technology, 4(1), 32-39. Web.

Al-Maghrabi, T., & Dennis, C. (2011). What drives consumers’ continuance intention to e-shopping?: Conceptual framework and managerial implications in the case of Saudi Arabia. International Journal of Retail & Distribution Management, 39(12), 899-926. Web.

Askool, S. (2013). The use of social media in Arab countries: A case of Saudi Arabia. Web Information Systems and Technologies, 140(1), 201-219. Web.

Burton, S., & Soboleva, A. (2011). Interactive or reactive? Marketing with Twitter. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 28(1), 491-499. Web.

Neergard, H. (2005). Networking activities in technology-based entrepreneurial teams. International Small Business Journal, 23(5), 144-148. Web.

Park, J., & Oh, I. (2012). A case study of social media marketing by travel agency: The salience of social media marketing in tourism industry. International Journal of Tourism Sciences, 12(3), 93-106. Web.

Patino, A., Pitta, D., & Quinones, R. (2012). Social media’s emerging importance in market research. Journal of Consumer Marketing, 29(1), 233-237. Web.

Wang, C., & Zhang, P. (2012). The evolution of social commerce: The people, management, technology, and information dimensions. Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 31(2), 19-33. Web.

Abstract

This report considers some aspects of organizational behavior, including its general aspects as well as diversity, job satisfaction, and employees’ emotions. Twitter is a company that is used as an example of a business with developed attitude monitoring and engagement encouraging practices. The analysis shows that Twitter’s results on their path to increasing diversity are not as transparent as one may think. The company pays significant attention to increasing job satisfaction and organizational commitment. The recommendation for Twitter is to update its diversity standards and allow its employees to move up the career ladder. The future analysis of the company can also review its process of dealing with conflict situations.

Introduction

Organizational behavior (OB) can be viewed as a foundation of any business’ success and resilience. According to Newstrom and Davis (2007), it is also the “study and application of knowledge about how people as individuals or as groups act within organizations” (p. 5). Therefore, OB can be used as a tool which management teams understand or justify the mature of employees and according to which they make appropriate decisions to lead the organization. The goals of OB are to describe how people act under different conditions and understand why people behave in certain ways. Managers could become frustrated with their employees if they did not understand the reasons behind their workers’ actions.

Employers who have examined their company’s OB have the capacity to predict which employees might be dedicated and productive or which ones might be unproductive or prone to conflicts, thus allowing them to take preventive action. The final goal of OB is to control and develop human-based activities at work. Managers have a responsibility to achieve high-performance outcomes, and they are interested in being able to make an impact on employee behavior, productivity, skill development, and team effort (Newstrom & Davis, 2007). Higher ranks of employees need to be able to improve results through the actions they and their workers take, and OB is one of the ways to aid them in this pursuit.

OB is a generalized term that includes various aspects, such as employees’ job satisfaction, diversity, and company culture. Currently, many companies undergo changes to adhere to the ever-evolving business sphere. Nonetheless, some firms fail to represent their employees or deliver fair treatment to all their members. The issue of diversity remains especially high for technology developers that have a history of racial and gender discrepancy in their staff (Hervey, 2019). The company that will be reviewed in relation to its OB and diversity issues is Twitter. This research paper will consider the business’ attitudes, employees’ job satisfaction, representation of minorities, and overall emotional background of the members.

Background

Twitter is a company that provides a platform for social networking. It was founded by Jack Dorsey, Noah Glass, Biz Stone, and Evan Williams in California in 2006 (“About Twitter,” 2019). Currently, Twitter can be considered one of the most popular social media sites and applications. However, the staff numbers remain relatively low, with approximately 3,300 people working for the company from different parts of the world (“About Twitter,” 2019).

The OB of Twitter is not as transparent as one would hope. While the platform sees millions of active users every day, the employees of Twitter do not share their everyday routine often, which leaves the analysis of the firm’s policies to available data and reports. For instance, it is known that in 2016 and 2017, Twitter faced some accusations due to its failure to diversify (Wagner & Molla, 2018). Moreover, newer descriptions of the company’s activities are not available, the latest reports on Twitter’s culture coming from 2012 (Kruse, 2012). These pieces of information may be used to create a picture of how Twitter attempts to build its OB.

Analysis

The Nature of Organizational Behavior

Organizational behavior is a recent area of study that is developing into a unique field. It has progressed in the second half of the twentieth century. Its contemporary nature may be addressed as under a separate field of study. Significant research and analysis have been done in this sphere, but it is still not accepted as a separate discipline. There is no framework of basic concepts that may guide its evolution as a science.

As an outcome, it can be called a field of study rather than discipline. The aim of OB is to find solutions to organizations’ problems related to the aspect of human behavior. Thus, applied researches are concentrated in place of theoretical researches. Moreover, OB can be considered an art as well since its’ investigations require a creative outlook on the present and future of organizational success.

At Twitter, the overall atmosphere of employees seems to be positive. Modern companies that work with technology, especially social media, are focused on representing their workplace setting as fun, engaging, and creative, Twitter is not an exception – the business’s “About” page is not centered on facts or the history of the organization but on its place in the delivery of the latest news. Furthermore, it prides itself as a foundation for building communication between people as well as businesses.

According to Varyani (2016), “[OB] is based on the concept that need and motivation of the people should be given priority … if people are given proper environment … they are creative, independent and capable of achieving organizational objectives” (para. 5). However, one may see that any of Twitter’s main website pages do not focus on the company’s members, including their working conditions, salaries, and other information. Some of this data can be found on the business’ blog where it releases its efforts and achievements in improving the company’s culture.

Diversity in Organizations

Diversity as a concept is gaining more and more attention among employees and employers alike. It can be defined by the “ways in which people in an organization are different from and similar to one another” (Gonzales & Zamanian, 2015, p. 595).

The characteristics of a diverse staff can be very broad, but the primary differences are based on workers’ gender, race or ethnicity, and age. Some narrow classifications such as people’s religion, education, sexual orientation, culture, values, immigrant status, and others are also gaining recognition as the political and economic situations evolve. The field of diversity is interested in the “outcomes and management of individual differences in organizational settings” (Gonzales & Zamanian, 2015, p. 595). This aspect of OB is especially relevant in countries where the demographic makeup is not unified.

It should be noted that the issue of low diversity is not limited to the number of people hired. The investigation is also concerned with the quality of the environment, its readiness to accommodate people from different backgrounds. Diversity is also the process of “recognizing, understanding and accepting individual differences irrespective of their race, gender, age, class, ethnicity, physical ability, race, sexual orientation, spiritual practice and so on” (Dike, 2013, p. 5).

Both primary (age, gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity) and secondary (income, religion, education) characteristics of people are important to address and acknowledge. Some of these qualities cannot be noticed without engaging with the people, and companies should work to recognize the different sides of their employees to provide them with a comfortable working environment.

The world’s movement towards globalization further complicates the issue of diversity. It has “triggered more interaction amongst people from different cultures and backgrounds that before,” thus urging companies to update their policies (Dike, 2013, p. 5). Nonetheless, businesses should not perceive the concept of diversity as a threat to their success – in many cases, globalization is a solution to a company’s problems. In the case of Twitter, diversity is a positive force that helps the platform expand and capture new international markets. Cultural differences are vital in the creation of services in organizations that aim to serve people from all around the globe, and Twitter’s increased diversity would benefit its goals.

At the present moment, Twitter is working to redistribute its positions to people with different backgrounds. For example, the company stated that it is centered on two primary areas – increasing the number of women and Black and Latinx people in the workforce (Twitter, Inc., 2019). In the latest report, the firm demonstrated that its staff is changing continuously, adding people from different countries to its roster. However, some publications have challenged the validity of the presented numbers and demonstrated that the share of non-white workers did not grow significantly and possibly even decreased in the latest year.

According to Wagner and Molla (2018), in comparison to 2017, in 2018, more people working at Twitter decided not to disclose their ethnicity. In turn, the company attributed this group of people to minorities, thus increasing the overall count of non-white employees. This action may be seen as alarming when analyzing the firm’s efforts to improve its diversity. Accounting for the fact that Twitter was pressured into reconsidering its practices in 2017, this news is especially concerning (Wagner & Molla, 2018). It is vital to recognize that Twitter still has diversity-related issues.

Attitudes and Job Satisfaction

Another aspect of OB is job satisfaction which can be investigated from different perspectives as well. It often depends on workers’ and managers’ attitudes towards each other and personal duties. Attitudes reveal people’s feelings about a certain subject, they act as “evaluative statements—either favorable or unfavorable—about objects, people, or events” (Robbins & Judge, 2014, p. 35). Therefore, a simple statement such as, “I like my job,” can be interpreted as an attitude.

The discussed concept depends on three dimensions – cognitive, affective, and behavioral. The first one, cognitive, deals with the way employees evaluate activities and changes in the workplace. Workers may grow unsatisfied with the fact that they do not receive regular promotions or that their manager is acting unfairly for particular reasons. At this stage, their attitude is based on their way of thinking about the environment around them.

The next step is effective in which people express a certain feeling toward the situation. If a person simply states that they dislike their coworker or supervisor, their attitude is effective. Finally, if workers are acting to change their job or talking to others about their problems, they are engaging in a behavioral attitude. As presented in Figure 1 three discussed dimensions of attitude are closely related since one may derive from or depend on another.

At work, the behavioral component of attitudes is the most significant because it shows the ways in which people choose to act and collaborate with other employees. If the organizational culture is not transparent, and all workers think that their supervisors are keeping information from them, their attitude may lead to a lack of teamwork or low efficiency. Here, the research is focused on three concepts, “job satisfaction, job involvement, and organizational commitment” (Robbins & Judge, 2014, p. 36).

All of these aspects depend on the employees’ attitude and are based on how each business treats its members. Job satisfaction is a set of positive feelings linked to one’s work, including pay, working hours, environment, team, and other factors. Job involvement is the interest that a person may have in duties and responsibilities. Finally, organizational commitment is a positive feeling towards the company and its structure as well as a desire to work with this business.

In the case of Twitter, the company takes many actions to keep its employees engaged and committed. Although the information available to the public is not recent, it is possible to assume that such practices remain in use for years since the company’s staff and the number of offices continues to expand. According to Kruse (2012), Twitter uses four primary ways to motivate employees. The first one is CEO-led management sessions during which the current CEO interacts with the company’s managers and utilizes personal stories, practices, and role-playing to build strong relationships and create an informal company culture.

This practice may positively affect the leadership experiences of Twitter managers and make the position more rewarding than it would be otherwise. It is possible that these meetings also contribute to organizational commitment since they create a framework of open communication and easy-to-reach upper management.

The second discussed practice is a job satisfaction survey that Twitter employees complete two times each year. Kruse (2012) states that other companies conduct such data collection much rarer, while Twitter provides its workers with a short and concise questionnaire that does not take up a significant portion of their day. This survey has some open-ended questions that allow workers to share their thoughts and introduce new ideas for improvement.

It is unclear to what extent this input is considered, so the level of employee participation remains obscure. Furthermore, the company keeps a monthly employee dashboard that accounts for any changes in the pool, including attrition levels and the impact of learning programs. The initiative involving regular surveys is a measure that can be beneficial to keeping employees satisfied. One should note that open-ended questions are an interesting approach to democratizing the working space and providing employees with the ability to participate.

Third, Twitter simplifies its requirements for employees and condenses them into five main characteristics. They are “Communication, Development, Direction, Change and Collaboration” (Kruse, 2012, para. 6). Each of these core skills is vital for Twitter, and the company makes sure to pay attention to improving each of them in its workers. As a result, the staff is often engaged in seminars and exchange programs that challenge them and provide them with new competencies and experiences. The commitment to such a simple structure is transparent enough to provide workers and managers with an easy system of OB.

Finally, similar to the satisfaction survey, Twitter gives its employees an opportunity to provide feedback. This is accomplished through learning labs and performance reviews during which workers are encouraged to share whatever they feel is pertinent to what is happening in the company (Kruse, 2012). The ability for the staff to voice their concerns is vital for a business to maintain a connection with individual employees and the working force as a whole.

Managers are often afraid of open and fearless feedback which may contribute to them limiting employees’ outreach (Robbins & Judge, 2014). Twitter appears to be moving in the opposite direction, giving its staff the tools to improve the company’s systems. It also provides employees with an opportunity to express their feelings – both positive and negative – towards the business, relieving stress and reducing the impact of negative events.

Findings, Suggestions, and Recommendations

According to the analysis presented above, one may see that Twitter’s OB has its strengths and weaknesses. On the one hand, the company employs a robust system of monitoring people’s job satisfaction levels. On the other hand, its diversity efforts are less satisfactory than desired. It is clear that the firm pays significant attention to its worker’s organizational commitment. Moreover, while it may seem that Twitter’s efforts about increasing diversity are not effective, the business continues to work on various programs for its improvement. Recently, two of the Twitter executives commented on the organization’s latest efforts and stated that diversity is not a problem that is limited to HR management (Hervey, 2019).

They admitted that diversity encouragement is not only a tool to prevent or lower discrimination in the job market. It can also be used for innovation because people from different backgrounds are able to offer unique experiences. The abundance of various cultures is beneficial for companies who depend on continuous innovation (Gelfand, Aycan, Erez, & Leung, 2017). Indeed, a team with diverse members can exchange knowledge that would otherwise remain unseen by people with similar abilities.

One of the recommendations that can be given to Twitter deal with changing its approach to diversity. While its executives already comment on the restructuring of this process to target innovation, one may also suggest the company stray away from accepting diversity-valuing behavior without acknowledging a power imbalance that often follows ineffective diversity-encouraging initiatives.

As Hekman, Johnson, Foo, and Yang (2017) find, diversity-valuing behavior can contribute to minorities (including women and people of color) having lower performance ratings. This problem persists in organizations that limit minorities’ presence in upper and middle management. If Twitter is committed to creating a diverse community of workers, its structure has to consider the imbalance of executive and managerial influence and change its recruitment policies.

Conclusions and Future Work

Organizational behavior is a vital tool in addressing companies’ interaction with employees. It is concerned with a variety of issues, and its analysis allows one to see how workers, managers, and businesses act towards each other. In the case of Twitter, one may see a company that is trying to implement changes but is still struggling to overcome the problems that are common in the field of technology and development.

The business pays significant attention to increasing its workers’ job satisfaction and organizational commitment. However, it fails to develop policies that would adequately enhance the level of diversity in the different ranks of the staff. The main recommendation for Twitter is to continue working on diversification, introducing standards that protect minorities and allow them to explore their capabilities in higher positions. For future work, one may consider conflict management in the company and consider Twitter’s power structures.

References

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Introduction

Twitter’s most important assets include its large user base, its platform for real-time communication, and its vast amount of data on user behavior and engagement. Additionally, its brand recognition, its algorithm that shows the most relevant tweets, and its partnerships with other media companies and celebrities are also considered important assets.

Discussion

Twitter’s business model has evolved since its foundation in 2006. Initially, the company relied mainly on venture capital funding and did not generate significant revenue. However, as the platform grew in popularity, the company began to explore different revenue streams (Work & Brand, 2020). In 2010, Twitter introduced promoted tweets, a form of advertising that allows companies to pay to have their tweets appear at the top of users’ timelines. This was the company’s first significant source of revenue. In the following years, Twitter expanded its advertising offerings to include promoted accounts and promoted trends, as well as data licensing agreements with third-party companies (Work & Brand, 2020). The company also began to experiment with e-commerce, allowing users to purchase products directly from tweets. Twitter utilizes machine learning in several areas of its platform to improve the user experience and drive revenue. Machine learning algorithms are used to identify and remove inappropriate content, such as hate speech and misinformation, making the platform safer and more enjoyable for users. Additionally, machine learning can be used to analyze users’ behavior and preferences, allowing Twitter to show them more relevant content and personalized recommendations. Twitter has taken several steps to improve “conversational health” on its platform, such as implementing new policies to address hate speech and misinformation, investing in machine learning technology to identify and remove inappropriate content, and providing users with more tools to control their experience on the platform.

Conclusion

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on Twitter, as more people turned to the platform for real-time information and updates on the crisis. This led to an increase in usage and engagement on the forum and also presented new challenges for the company in terms of moderating content related to the pandemic.

Reference

Work, J., & Brand, G. (2020). E-Commerce Business Model 2020.