Dive Brief: 

• Twitter has announced plans to acquire Indian startup ZipDial. 
• The five-year-old company is an ad tech and analytics firm with an ad-selling platform based on the "missed call" — a common practice in India to avoid mobile charges. 
• The social networks hopes ZipDial could help it expand in the emerging Indian market. 

Dive Insight: 

While the majority of Twitter users — 78%, according to AdAge — reside outside the U.S., those users aren't as active. ZipDial could help the social network become more attuned to the cultural and economic differences of international Twitter users. Something like the missed call trick would be hard to understand without a foothold in India. Expanding internationally could offer Twitter another leg up in competition with other social networks.