Image: Kurt Wagner, Mashable
Even with an IPO looming, Twitter is not done experimenting. Its latest field test, which arrived Thursday, is a new account called @eventparrot. It has over 27,000 followers and a Twitter verification, and sends followers direct messages about breaking news apparently curated by Twitter.
Event Parrot is the second Twitter-operated account to utilize the Direct Messages inbox to push content out to users. The first account, @MagicRecs, sends users DMs with follow recommendations based on who their friends are adding. (The idea behind Magic Recs led to a full blown push notification feature released last month.) In both cases, Twitter is utilizing the DM inbox in a new way, sending messages that aren't generated by friends or colleagues, but by a machine.
It's unclear what Thursday's new experiment means for Twitter moving forward. (A Twitter spokesperson declined to comment.) But the addition of a second pubic experiment that pushes out content to users does raise some questions regarding Twitter's direction as it heads towards its IPO next month.
As AllThingsD pointed out Thursday, the experimental account could be Twitter's first building block as it, potentially, builds its own news service, one that aggregates stories and chooses which ones are worth sending out to users. Twitter is reportedly looking to fill a Head of News position at the company, and a move toward more content promotion wouldn't be out of the question.
"Twitter doesn't want to become a content creator," explains Zachary Reiss-Davis, an analyst with Forrester Research. "Twitter wants to take content already on the site and promote it to a broader audience."
Are You Engaged?
We also know that Twitter needs to come up with new ways to keep its users engaged. In the company's S-1 documents released last week, Twitter identified the continued growth and engagement of its user base as the most important risk factor for the company moving forward.
Paul Stamatiou, a "growth designer" at Twitter according to his bio, not so subtly shared news of the Event Parrot account to his over 23,000 followers Thursday morning. When members of Twitter's growth team are sharing this feature publicly, it's safe to assume that the new account is, among other things, an engagement experiment. It could give users a new reason to visit the service throughout the day.
While Event Parrot and Magic Recs both seem useful, Twitter will also need to consider how the new engagement tactics fundamentally change key aspects of the now seven-year-old social media platform.
Both experiments take Twitter's most private space, the Direct Message inbox — and open it (with permission, of course) to push content curated by Twitter. DM inboxes are already hotspots for spam. These messages, which will not be part of an on-going private conversation between two Twitter users, could conceivably become an annoyance.
Perhaps most importantly, the act of pushing content to users may lay the groundwork for similar messages from advertisers and marketers. Twitter will need new ways to generate revenue when the company starts answering to investors each quarter, and pushing out messages from advertisers could be a possibility.
Experiments are a big part of how Twitter operates — the company claims that "it’s rare for a day to go by when we’re not releasing at least one experiment" out to the Twittersphere. Thursday's Event Parrot account is the most recent of the bunch, but surely won't be the last.
Whether Twitter is building a news service, enhancing its ad platform, or simply hoping to capture our attention, the company's experiments offer food for thought as Twitter moves towards the public markets.
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