Twitter yesterday changed how its iOS mobile app is categorized on the App Store in order to enhance its visibility, following the company's poor Q1 earnings report earlier this week (via TechCrunch).

Twitter now appears in the "News" category, where it's the #1 ranked app ahead of CNN and Reddit. Previously it could be found in "Social Networking", where it occupied #5 in the category rankings, behind the likes of Facebook, Instagram, Messenger, and WhatsApp.

twitter app store
Achieving a #1 ranking in the App Store should also give Twitter's "Overall" ranking a boost, which equates to better visibility in the top "Free" apps chart, where Twitter currently sits at #28.

The company has not commented on the thematic switch, which has yet to be reflected in the Google Play store (where it still sits in the "Social" category), but the change indicates that Twitter is looking to court a new audience interested in sources of breaking news and curated information on current affairs, as it seeks a strategy that will heighten its online profile and significantly boost growth.

Twitter's Q1 earnings earlier this week showed poor performance, with $595 million company revenues falling short of the $607.8 million analysts expected. The platform had zero growth in new users in Q4 of 2015, but a new tallying system enabled the company to report a 2 percent increase in active users in Q1 (310 million, up from 305 million users in Q4). The company remains unprofitable, with a Q1 net loss of -$79.7 million, and gave bleak guidance for the quarter ahead.

Twitter has attempted to improve its core product over the past year with a number of changes to the way the platform works. The app now sorts tweets in the timeline by quality rather than recency, for example, while the starred "favorite" icon got replaced with a "like" heart icon. However, Twitter's stock fell more than 12 percent after its Q1 report, indicating the company's efforts to increase its mainstream appeal have so far failed to pay dividends.

In March, Apple launched its Apple Support account on the social network, which is dedicated to answering customer support questions. Earlier this month, Apple launched a new Twitter account for Apple News, giving its Apple News team a way to promote stories and content on the social network. The Apple News Twitter account is used to share "top stories" and "great reads" curated by Apple News editors in the United States.

Tag: Twitter

Top Rated Comments

SandboxGeneral Avatar
103 months ago
Twitter now appears in the "News" category, where it's the #1 ranked app ahead of CNN and Reddit.
Makes sense given how I use Twitter. Mostly its news related tweets and stuff I'm interested in learning about that I follow. I don't have very much social interaction on it.
Score: 5 Votes (Like | Disagree)
adamneer Avatar
103 months ago
"What's this new news app here? Twitter? Hmm, I've never heard of it, I think I'll download it and give it a try."

-A handful of old people

INSTANT SUCCESS
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
chromite Avatar
103 months ago
How does Twitter even make money?
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
snowmoon Avatar
103 months ago
Twitter is news and I'm a Nobel Prize winner. /s

Neither Twitter nor Reddit deserve to be highly ranked in the news category.
Score: 3 Votes (Like | Disagree)
nburwell Avatar
103 months ago
Originally I joined Twitter for the social interaction piece since I got rid of my Facebook account. However, over the past year, I have found that I have been tweeting less and paying more attention to the news aspect of the organizations and people I follow. I have to say that right now, the majority of news I get is via Twitter and reading NYT.

Although I don't know how much Twitter moving to the 'News' category in the App Store is going to increase their visibility.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)
SBlue1 Avatar
103 months ago
How does Twitter even make money?
They sell ads. And they probably sell your data.
Score: 1 Votes (Like | Disagree)

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