KUALA LUMPUR (June 8): Facebook’s mobile struggles are unique to Facebook and not endemic to social networks as a whole, said Australia-based independent technology analyst firm Ovum.
It said this after Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo was reported last Wednesday as saying that the company had generated more advertising revenue from its mobile platform than from its website on many days in the last quarter.
Costolo highlighted the progress Twitter was making in earning advertising revenue from the growing number of smartphone and tablet users worldwide.
In a statement Friday, Ovum’s Chief Telecoms Analyst Jan Dawson, commenting on Costolo’s statement said that Twitter had a long heritage in mobile (the 140-character limit was driven by the 160-character limit of text messages) and its management clearly wanted people to understand that it doesn’t see the same challenges in monetizing mobile as Facebook does.
“It’s as if he’s saying, “We’re not Facebook – don’t tar us with the same brush. We’re doing just fine in mobile, thank you very much!” said Dawson.
Dawson said this was not to say that Twitter did not have challenges of its own in mobile.
“In contrast to Facebook, which hasn’t found a way to monetize the use of its own clients on mobile devices, Twitter’s biggest challenge will be finding a way to monetize the use of third-party clients on mobile devices, which were the only option in the early days and are still very popular.
“Twitter has tried to overcome that problem by acquiring several of the most popular clients, but it still doesn’t have a definitive strategy for monetizing mobile either,” he said.