Twitter has rolled out a new app to court small business users

IN ITS LATEST attempt to keep itself relevant, Twitter has just launched a new app specifically designed for small businesses.

Last July, Twitter founder Jack Dorsey assumed the reins at the company he founded 10 years ago in a bid to address the stagnation in its growth of new users.

Over the past year, Dorsey has overseen the launch of a number of new features aimed at spicing up the social media platform, including Moments, which was designed to make the service easier for new users.

Dashboard is the latest web and iOS app to be released by the social media giant and is specifically targeted towards small businesses that don’t have dedicated social media teams or the arsenal of analytics tools that larger firms have at their disposals.

In an announcement on its blog, Twitter revealed that the app will give businesses a better overview of how much users are chatting about the company on the social media network.

The app’s ‘about me’ section collates tweets relevant to the business. This includes tracking conversations in which the company or other related keywords, such as about its products, are mentioned without the firm being tagged.

Similar to other apps such as Tweetdeck, Dashboard also allows businesses to schedule banks of tweets in order to share content at appropriate times to reach a larger audience.

Dashboard also gives a more detailed overview of the analytics behind what content is posted and will even give tips to businesses about what content to share with their followers.

The announcement of Dashboard has come less than a week after Twitter revealed an analytics app, called Engage, that is aimed at celebrities and what the social network calls “popular creators” on the network.

The standalone app allows its most popular users to monitor engagements on tweets and monetise some of their content.

Mixed results

Since Dorsey’s return to the company, things haven’t gone entirely to plan. Twitter has rolled out a few new features to address investors sliding confidence in the company – reflected in its plummeting share price – and stagnant user growth.

The value of the company has halved in the past year, while revenue growth is at its lowest rate since the company went public.

While Dashboard is hardly Dorsey’s big throw of the dice, pressure is mounting on the company’s founder to pull something out the bag to turn around Twitter’s fortunes.