Twitter has always wanted to be the number one spot in news and it is now on App Store (Photo : Getty Images/Bloomberg)
Twitter has changed its App Store categorization to news for better discovery, beating CNN and Reddit as top news apps. The shift was implemented on April 28, Thursday, after a disappointing performance in the quarterlies while a similar shift is expected for Play Store.
CNN and Reddit used to lead the App Store listing of news apps, but not anymore. After Twitter's iOS app changed its category from "Social Networking" to "News," it has become number one news app on the Apple's smartphone app market, MacRumors reported.
In the previous category, Twitter was pushed to number five by top ranking "Social Networking" apps, all owned by Facebook. This included Facebook, Instagram, Facebook Messenger and Whatsapp. Securing number one spot in news category also means Twitter app might also get an improved "Overall" score from the App Store so the change, TechCrunch pointed out, has a two-fold effect.
All this effort is aimed at getting better visibility because apps that lead the list in any particular category are more likely to get high rankings and more installs. The competition is tremendous and though Twitter has beat CNN and Reddit apps, it is still ranked #28 by App Store in the top "Free" apps chart.
On Play Store, these changes are yet to manifest where the social app is rightfully displayed under "social" category. So far, there has been no word from the company about the development but experts think that Twitter may be re-aligning its interests to breaking news and live channels. This is what CNN and Reddit have been already doing with their apps, but Twitter is more popular and could steal the benefits.
Twitter's quarterly report to the shareholders has clearly run short of successes, The company was able to reap $595 million compared to &607.8 million, making a gap of $17.2 million gaps to the expected target. The fault probably lies in its inability to come up with more profitable advertising ideas like Facebook and Google have employed. The social platform has always undermined the power of its core product, which is Twitter itself boasting a 420 million user base.
The following video clues that the company's shift to the news on App Store and expectedly on Play Store soon is not something completely unanticipated.
