Twingly, the Swedish startup which started off as Technorati for the European market has been quite a regular mention at Arctic Startup. It is in news once again as Twingly shifts gears towards group communication and microblogging. The shift changes quite a bit compared to what it had been doing earlier; social aggregation.
The latest release pivots the conversation view in the main channel window, transforming Twingly form being the RSS tool we knew of to being a neat microblogging tool. This transforms into a more conversation centric platform that ensures users spend more time on the site than with searching for blogs, microblogs, etc. The link aggregation view continues to be in its place as a remnant to what it was formerly.
So why exactly would Twingly make this shift? There might be a different story or a reason to be precise from Twingly, but in my opinion its all about keeping the users engaged, primarily. And here’s why, think of it for a moment an RSS aggregation platform isn’t going to ensure that users stick to your site or service. If I like a story, I would want to move away from this aggregator to the original site, likewise I can simply move to any other destination online. When users are given a chance to communicate and share an opinion or two they remains hooked and want to return just to see what updates are made.
What intrigues me more is why are they pivoting their business? Does this point at Twingly not leveraging the purpose it was built for? I might be quite wrong here, but in my opinion the earlier model had some cracks and this recent change is an attempt to improve their standings. I see no direct connection otherwise for such a change.
