Why Twitter needs Saudi Arabia

Twitter went public last week, in case you’ve been on a break from the internet. Like Facebook’s IPO before it, Twitter’s release of 70 million shares to the New York Stock Exchange has been treated by the media as a harbinger of the future of all things digital.

Judging from the social network’s trading history so far, the future is looking bright. But in order to continue its fairy tale, Twitter is going to have to focus its attention on what might seem an unlikely place: Saudi Arabia.

Because Twitter shares generally weren’t being sold off by the end of the first trading day, many analysts are calling the IPO a success, while others argue that its underpricing was a mistake, as Twitter could have made a billion dollars more than it did- more than sum of its total revenue to date.

Regardless of how one measures success, it’s clear that the pressure is now on for Twitter to grow, gain more active users (some estimate that only around 26% of users are actually active, and 61% have never even tweeted once), and boost its revenue from international markets (only 26% of its profits last quarter came from outside the US).

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Why Twitter needs Saudi Arabia