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Twitter Renews Its Identity as "News" in App Store to Boost Growth

Staff Reporter

The Fast growing social media Twitter quietly switched its category into "news" from "social networking" in App Store, after the company announced its frustrating quarterly earnings and advertising revenue earlier this week.

The move immediately makes Twitter the first-ranked News app from the fifth place in Social app, overtaking the previous News app champion, Reddit's new app.

Recent years, the tech titan has struggled to grow. Its monthly active user base increases 60 million from 2014's 240 million. Meanwhile, Facebook has 1.5 billion monthly active users, up from 1.2 billion two years ago.

Techcrunch's Sarah Perez said in a report, Twitter aims to boost its visibility by switching to News in App Store. Twitter is now ranking 28th in the App Store's top "Free" apps chart. Becoming a first-ranked app could potentially improve its overall rankings and give it better visibility.

The change suggests that Twitter is "looking to court a new audience interested in sources of breaking news and curated information on current affairs," which might significantly boost its growth, said MacRumors.

Newsweek cited Ross Rubin, Industry research firm App Annie's senior director of industry analysis, as saying, "Twitter's decision to move to the news category is clearly driven by a need for stronger visibility and differentiation. However, it also reflects a key focus area for the company-reinforcing its association with real-time updates."

PCMag's TOM BRANT pointed out, the social giant's move comes a few month after Apple unleashed its search results algorithm to show more related apps. To distinguish itself, it is very important for Twitter to keep a top ranking.

Twitter has not commented publicly on this switch. The Twitter app on Google Play are still in the "Social" category. We do not know whether the company will make similar move in Google Play.

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