While Jack Dorsey’s tenure as Twitter CEO has seen the micro-blogging site introduce a wide array of new features in the face of declining financial fortunes, one country where the slide shouldn’t stop soon is the United Arab Emirates, new research has discovered.
55% of UAE residents surveyed by the Qatar-based Northwestern University revealed that they were Twitter users. This is significantly lower than the 69% recorded in 2014, though the picture is rosier with Emiratis in the 18-24 age bracket; this year, their use was 67%, down from 74% in 2014.
Justin Martin, assistant professor in journalism at the university, opined that recently-announced changes to Twitter were “not a bad idea”, but “probably not enough to staunch or reverse losses”. As also reported by UAE news outlet The National, Joe Akkawi, an avid Twitter user and managing partner at a Dubai PR firm, also expressed his belief that the changes would be ineffective.
He insisted that the changes “clearly address existing tweeters and don’t show any signs of making it easy for first-time users to use the platform better, which is Twitter’s biggest challenge.”
