BEFORE Jack Dorsey helped found Twitter, the social-media firm known for snappy, rapid-fire updates, he worked briefly as a masseur. More recently, Mr Dorsey has been trying to massage away the aches and pains that afflict his creation. He returned as the firm’s chief executive in July 2015, taking over from Dick Costolo, who presided over a period of slowing growth and a string of departures by senior executives.

Twitter’s problems have continued despite Mr Dorsey’s ministrations. The biggest is that it has largely stopped growing. Its tally of monthly users, at around 313m, is barely rising. Americans who use the service via their smartphones spend around 2.8 minutes on it each day, which is around a third less than they did two years ago and far less than they spend on rival apps, such as Facebook and Snapchat. In the next quarter, revenues are expected to fall. Even though sales will probably increase for the full year, a quarterly drop is worrying for an internet company which is a household name and only ten years old.

In bringing back Mr Dorsey, who was pushed out in 2008, Twitter’s board was betting that his earlier knack for unruly creativity could work once again. Soon after arriving he announced a new offering called “Moments”, which shows Twitter users what subjects are trending, and said the service would loosen some restrictions on its strict 140-character limit, which dates from its early days as an SMS messaging service. Mr Dorsey has also expanded the firm’s video offering. Twitter won the rights to stream ten matches from the National Football League, the first of them on September 15th.

Its biggest strength remains its well-known brand, and its central place in users’ lives. “Every sentient, literate being on earth has heard of Twitter,” says Peter Stabler, an analyst with Wells Fargo Securities, a bank. Well before Donald Trump made it one of his main campaign tools, it was the most popular platform for posting and discovering news. The video that captured Hillary Clinton stumbling near New York City’s 9/11 memorial this week, shortly before she admitted to having pneumonia, was first posted on Twitter, some time before professional news outlets picked it up.

But Twitter’s share price has fallen by half since Mr Dorsey returned, to around $18. And the reasons to be pessimistic are multiplying. The first problem is Mr Dorsey himself. Considering the firm’s challenges, it needs a full-time boss if it is to have any hope of rebounding. Yet Mr Dorsey continues to split his time between Twitter and Square, another public company he co-founded which manages financial payments (and which has also struggled of late). Far more of his net worth is tied to Square’s performance than to Twitter’s. Having a boss who shows up part-time affects morale at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters, say people there. Because he is often working at Square, many managers arrive late, depart early and generally show up just to “punch the time card”, says one former senior executive who has sold all of his shares. Second, Mr Dorsey’s conviction that there is no need for a radical overhaul of the core product looks like a mistake. Twitter has a loyal base of users—probably around 20m-40m—who adore the service and want only minor tweaks. But the vast majority of people find it fiddly. Mr Dorsey has tweaked some algorithms, as well as launching Moments, but bigger changes are needed to win back lapsed users and bring in new ones. Some observers recommend eliminating the 140-character limit to allow far freer expression. Twitter also needs to rid itself of trolls who harass users, and to close down its millions of false accounts. According to a website called Twitter Audit that analyses followers, 35% of Mr Dorsey’s own 3.8m followers are fake. Third, and most worryingly, while Twitter was distracted by dysfunction and turnover at the top, rival firms have pushed into the space it once might have owned. Twitter was early to recognise the potential of video. It bought Vine, an app specialising in six-second videos, in 2012, and Periscope, a live-streaming app, last year. But Facebook is energetically pushing into video, and Snapchat, a mobile messaging app that launched in 2011 and is popular with youngsters, is heavy on video, too. Facebook has now added the option of following people, a signature feature of Twitter. It has also invested in news, which people used to go to Twitter to read. Referral traffic to external websites from Twitter, including to many news websites, has declined by a fifth in the past 15 months, according to Chartbeat, a web-analytics firm. Celebrities and politicians still tweet, but they are sharing photos on Instagram (a photo app owned by Facebook) and posting videos on Snapchat, too. Messaging apps, such as WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, are hugely popular. People who might have chirped at each other on Twitter are spending more time in these apps. In short, while Twitter used to have an edge because it anticipated people’s desire to share news and details about their lives online, it has been painfully slow to defend the territory it helped popularise.

Twitter will survive, but it has lost its chance to be the sort of internet giant it might have become under better management. Advertisers go where users spend time. Although many brands buy ads on Twitter, they are unlikely to increase spending unless more users flock to the service, or existing users spend more time there. In 2017 Twitter’s revenues will probably rise by a paltry 6%, to $2.7 billion, according to Brian Nowak of Morgan Stanley, a bank. The firm is not profitable according to normal accounting standards (GAAP, or generally accepted accounting principles) because of the huge amount it pays out to employees in the form of stock-based compensation.

Some people wonder if it could make an acquisition and transform its fortunes. So far there is little sign that it has the appetite. It was reportedly in discussions to buy Medium, a platform for long-form writing owned by Evan Williams, who co-founded Twitter and still sits on its board (see article). But that purchase, of a small company, would not solve its problems.

It is far more likely that Twitter itself will eventually be bought. A deal may not arrive quickly, for Twitter’s share price, and its market value, at more than $12 billion, are still high. Several analysts are expecting a steep fall in its shares, possibly to as low as $13, a level at which it would make a tempting target. Some in Silicon Valley speculate that a media firm, such as Disney, might come forward. Mr Dorsey serves on Disney’s board. But the wholesome media giant may shy away from a platform that throws up daily crises over hate speech and undesirable users, including terrorists.

Another possible acquirer is 21st Century Fox, whose founder, Rupert Murdoch, might have a stronger stomach. Yet most people reckon that Google is the natural buyer, because it could tie Twitter in to its other properties, including search and YouTube, and sell more ads than Twitter can on its own. It has already agreed to help it sell some ad inventory and is showing tweets in its search results. Google could easily afford a high price.

It may so far have shied away from a purchase because of its clashes with European regulators on whether it is a digital monopoly and how it delivers online news articles. They might not look fondly on it controlling an important platform for news and free speech.

That sentiment may be widespread. Whether people use Twitter regularly or not, most would say they want it to thrive, whether on its own or under the wing of another company. The firm has helped raise awareness of conflicts and injustices, for example, in Egypt, Iran and Tunisia that would otherwise have attracted less attention. Much of the world will keep watching Mr Dorsey’s attempts to pound Twitter into shape, even if people increasingly do so on Facebook and Snapchat.