Social
networking site Twitter is all set to open its first research and
design centre outside the US, and the location will most likely be
Bangalore, according a report in The Financial Times. The team of
ZipDial, an Indian startup Twitter acquired for $40 million, will be the
basis for the R&D facility according to sources.
The
move is a result of Twitter’s increased focus on emerging markets such
as India and Indonesia, which are considered to be the fastest-growing
markets according to research group eMarketer. There is also some
pressure on Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter, to check the slowdown in the
growth of number of Twitter users.
According
to Rishi Jaitly, Twitter India head, the ZipDial acquisition is a big
step forward for Twitter as far as improving numbers in emerging markets
is concerned.
The
main reason behind the ZipDial acquisition was to reach users in
emerging markets who may not necessarily own a smartphone. ZipDial’s
basic functionality revolves around people who call numbers, but hang up
before the call is answered. This simple alert then becomes the basis
for a number of other, commercial actions, and analytics to track
everything. This proves beneficial to Twitter who can try to engage with
users who don’t log into Twitter. In fact. ZipDial has worked with
Twitter in the past. ZipDial and Twitter have teamed up on several
campaigns like Indian elections, Bollywood film promotions and
@MTVIndia’s #RockTheVote “Dial the Hashtag” campaign.
According to Jaitly, the similar approach can be deployed in other countries such as Brazil and Indonesia.
Valerie
Wagoner, the founder of ZipDial, who has now joined Twitter after the
acquisition, said that ZipDial’s developers would now report to
Twitter’s main product team in San Francisco. According to her, Twitter
wants to set up local engineering teams in emerging markets, so that it
can have a better control over the product.
Posted by : Gizmeon
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