Twitter news: Customer service tool introduced; core service being refined, say CEO

Social media company Twitter is making changes in order to attract more users. This week, it introduced a customer service tool that will help businesses interact better with their customers. 

In a post on the Twitter blog titled "Making customer service better on Twitter," product manager Ian Cairns explains the new feature, saying: "Twitter is live, public, and conversational — and the best place for businesses and customers to connect. ... recent research shows that when a customer Tweets a question or complaint to an airline and receives a response, they're willing to pay on average $9 more for their next purchase from that airline."

Last week, the company said that that they are currently testing a new algorithm that will allow users to show a chronological order of feeds rather than real time. According to CNN Money, co-founder Jack Dorsey, in a Periscope chat with CNN's analysts, said that there is "real promising growth" with this upcoming timeline feature.

"We're going to refine our core service and make everything more intuitive," Dorsey said. "There's an opportunity to fix broken windows and confusing aspects that are inhibiting growth. We think timeline is a big part of that."

However, The Globe and Mail reported that the social media company must have a goal to "innovate, not imitate" and have ideas of its own in order to revive social media users' interest. Twitter has lost a lot of its users in recent months, having lost almost 2 million in the last quarter of 2015. From 307 million, the numbers went down to 305 million, while Facebook has 1.6 billion active users. Instagram even outgrew Twitter, spiking to 400 million.

The hashtag #RIPTwitter trended within 24 hours two weeks ago and Dorsey responded with some tweets, saying, "Hello Twitter! Regarding #RIPTwitter: I want you all to know we're always listening. We never planned to reorder timelines next week."

He then continued to say, "I *love* real-time. We love the live stream. It's us. And we're going to continue to refine it to make Twitter feel more, not less, live!"

Even with the confirmed departure of the executives of the microblogging site, its management is planning to have new ideas from its product, engineering, media and HR directors.

David Giannetto, the author of "Big Social Mobile," said in a blog article at Huffington Post that according to 2016 Social Support Survey by TSIA, people prefer to use Twitter for customer service support. He also mentioned that this might be the future of the microblogging site.