It has been quite a year for Twitter. The social media giant has made headlines with its successes and failures in the past few months as it adjusts to a new phase in its evolution, rethinking much of its traditional setup and appeal.
One such area is data sharing. Speaking in Seattle today, Chris Moody, Twitter’s vice president of data strategy, said Twitter’s place as a public and private platform, as well as its wealth of public and private data, is driving the company to take a close look at how that data is used.
“I think the thing that has always been special about Twitter is that the information is public,” Moody said. “That has been a massive component of our data business, because at the end of the day… you don’t have to take Twitter’s word for it, you can see the data yourself.”
“At the same time though, as people, and especially as businesses, have gotten more and more comfortable with that, they want to push the lines,” sometimes wanting to use the data in ways that may be invasive to user’s private lives, Moody said.
“So that’s the balance and the challenge for us,” he said. “How do we keep driving innovation without in any way detrimenting the great experience users are getting on Twitter?” He didn’t offer any immediate answers but made it clear that user privacy is a major issue for the company.
Moody also said that “dark” social channels, like Twitter’s Direct Messaging platform, are becoming increasingly popular for users and businesses, creating more complex data situations.
Moody spoke today at the Lift 2016 conference hosted by Seattle-based social marketing analytics firm Simply Measured. In related news, Simply Measured announced the release of a new analytics solution that can trace specific revenue amounts to social media posts, including shares on dark social media platforms like messenger applications, email, and SMS.
