Your refusal to join Twitter is taking a toll - CNET

"Twitter will be 10 years old in March," the company said in a 17-page letter to shareholders.

"A decade!" the letter read. "Over that time we have had an incredible impact on culture and society, in a way that none of us ever dreamed of when we started, and have built a thriving business. Our work now is to set ourselves up to have even greater impact over the next 10 years. We are confident we will."

Twitter has made several attempts to appeal to new users. Dorsey and company added a feature called Moments in October, which points users to curated tweets, videos and images of events as they happen. Twitter thought Moments could tu casual users into active tweeters. So far, though, that hasn't happened (see meager 1 percent note above).

In November, the company also replaced its longtime star-shaped icon (Twitter's equivalent of Facebook's thumbs-up) with a heart. The reaction: meh.

Then came last month's rumor that Twitter may expand its signature 140-character limit per message to as much as 10,000 characters, or 2,000 words. Investors weren't happy with the idea of long-form tweets and sent the shares down 3 percent on the rumors. Then came the sudden exits of four key executives, including the heads of product and engineering.

But that was nothing compared with last week's outcry, and accompanying hashtag #RIPTwitter, over speculation that Twitter might show tweets it thought you'd want to see instead of just showing what the people you're following are tweeting as they post their messages. It got so bad that Dorsey took to Twitter to address the rumors.

Enlarge Image

Twitter on Wednesday tried to further calm the haters by unveiling a feature that actually tued out to be not much. It gives users the option to see key tweets at the top of their feeds, followed by the normal stream of messages in reverse chronological order.

Even though longtime users aren't happy with some of his tweaks, Dorsey can't afford to stop experimenting. Twitter needs to find new ways to win over more of a mainstream audience, because advertisers demand it. (The company gets about 90 percent of its revenue from ads.) Twitter is expected to grab 9 percent of all ad spending over social networks this year, while Facebook -- which has 1.59 billion active users -- will capture 65 percent, according to eMarketer.

So you could sum up the company's catch-22 in a tweet: Twitter won't grow until it reaches a mass market, and it can't reach a mass market if it doesn't grow.

In its letter to shareholders, Twitter listed five priorities for the year. First, it will "fix the broken windows and confusing parts ... that we know inhibit usage and drive people away." The company will also emphasize live streaming video, help entertainers and other "influencers" connect with fans, encourage developers to build add-on features and do more to make the service feel safer.

"At the center of everything is live," Dorsey said Wednesday in a conference call. The company has "a relentless focus on making this great and refining the core service."