Ask any consumer tech startup in Silicon Valley about its primary focus, and you'll undoubtedly hear about some type of commitment to the user experience.
Without a doubt, Twitter as a public company will operate differently as a business — after all, they'll have to answer to shareholders. But what kind of change can Twitter's reported 240 million monthly active users expect in regards to their day-to-day experience on the platform?
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According to analysts, not a whole lot.
"Twitter will be most successful if nothing changes from its user experience," says Nate Elliott, VP and principal analyst at Forrester Research.
For starters, Twitter already pays a lot of attention to their users while expanding their services, says Clark Fredricksen, VP at eMarketer.
"Twitter has been very cautious about rolling out new products, ad offerings and relationships with advertisers and media companies that it thinks could affect user experience," says Clark Fredricksen. "They've been careful not to alienate their user base."
The area of growth that would most likely garner user outrage after a Twitter IPO would be the addition of more obtrusive advertisements to the Twitter feed, although all three analysts Mashable spoke with don't see that happening. Twitter's bread and butter is now its use as "the second screen" during live television broadcasts around politics, sports and entertainment — a role that makes the platform ripe with advertising opportunity, says Brian Blau, research director for consumer technology at Gartner.
But that is nothing new to Twitter, which already monetizes heavily through advertisements. (In line with the platform's use as a second screen, Twitter even works with advertisers to help them target specific television audiences.) Because Twitter already employs an ad strategy that relies heavily on mobile and targeted ads, it's more likely a change in advertising would come around Twitter's other features, not the Twitter feed, Blau says.
Twitter will probably continue expansion into international markets, specifically Latin America and southeast Asia, but that growth should have little impact on how users engage with the company's products.
One part of the user experience that may change will be an influx of new features and partnerships , particularly around entertainment, television and ecommerce, Blau added.
Twitter recently hired former Ticketmaster president Nathan Hubbard to run commerce for the platform and bring shopping to the Twitter feed, and Blau believes the added transparency that comes with filing earnings documents each quarter will mean more features for users. "Long term for Twitter to survive, they're going to have to continue to do this expansion," Blau says. "You may not see tweets change, but you'll see a lot of other ancillary and complementary businesses and services from Twitter."
On the whole, analysts feel that Twitter is doing right by its users for now — a fact that won't change regardless of the pressure that can come from a relationship with Wall Street.
"They seem more aware than most that you can't kill the goose that laid the golden egg," Elliott says. "For social sites, that's users."
Do you think Twitter's user experience will change when the company goes public? Tell us in the comments below.
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