Apple Rumored To Want To Buy Twitter 325
OSXGlitch writes "A post on TechCrunch this morning extends the rumor that Apple wants to buy Twitter with part of their massive cash reserve (estimated at nearly $29B). The Twitterverse is alive with speculation that the price being discussed is $700 million. This goes against reports that Twitter's founders aren't interested in selling, and that they estimate the value of the company at around $250 million. Two questions: How do we all feel about the possibility of Apple owning Twitter? And, can Twitter decline an offer that is nearly three times their estimated worth?"
I will quit twitter (Score:5, Insightful)
and nothing of value will be lost.
Re:I will quit twitter (Score:5, Insightful)
I've never used twitter...
Re:I will quit twitter (Score:5, Interesting)
Apple is sitting on a buttload of cash right now, but wouldn't it be a hell of a lot more logical for them to build a fab with it? They certainly have been gathering in a whole lot of chip design expertise lately.
Re:I will quit twitter (Score:5, Informative)
We all know how profitable Skype [wikipedia.org] has been for after eBay paid 2.6 Billion dollars for them.
Skype actually has been profitable [skypejournal.com] recently. That said, Skype does not match up well with eBay's overall business model and I remember reading that they are looking to sell it.
Not to even mention how profitable Youtube [wikipedia.org] has been since Google paid a mere 1.65 Billion dollars for them.
Could it be a branding/goodwill tool that also helps them drive users to their search? They certainly paid an exorbitant amount for the eventual profitability, regardless, but Google and YouTube are now both cultural icons.
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Right. Because Google really needed YouTube to drive people to their search.
Re:I will quit twitter (Score:5, Interesting)
During the time of the YouTube acquisition, it was often discussed that they might have done it in order to set precedents for copyright laws and other distribution-related stuff (net neutrality, etc.) since Google has better lawyers than YouTube could have hoped to afford at the time. Theory being that if Youtube was sued, they wouldn't have the funding to fight unfair charges and a precedent would be set against them and other providers of free content; whereas with Google backing them they'd have the funding and/or legal team to win and have it go in their favor. It sucks that our court system favors who has the better lawyers and not what's actually in the law books, but that's life.
Skype, on the other hand, was just a stupid choice by eBay. But you can't expect much different from a company that's founded around the very concept of bad buying decisions.
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Google didn't pay 1.65bn, they actually paid most of the price using their highly overhyped and overinflated stock. So they were paying for one overinflated stock with another overinflated stock - net result, nothing of value was lost and most of that 1.65bn was actually notional and didn't really exist as such.
Re:I will quit twitter (Score:5, Funny)
your post is true both ways ;)
Re:I will quit twitter (Score:5, Insightful)
If anything, this is just an attempt to link Twitter to a company that has a very large wad of cash (which isn't that common right now), as well as one that mass name recognition (namely Apple), in order to increase Twitter's apparent value, either for more funding or to sell part/all of the company to somebody else.
Nobody at Apple is stupid enough to buy an SMS service.
If there was somebody this dumb at Apple, they would have already spent way to much for an instant messaging service (I bet you could buy AOL's IM service at fire-sale prices if you took the rest of AOL with it from TimeWarner).
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Re:I will quit twitter (Score:4, Informative)
You're confusing "like twitter" with "is twitter". I doubt it's hard to make a cola that tastes a lot better then Coke. At least it wouldn't cost as much as they spend on advertising. But trying to beat them wouldn't work out well because the brand is established.
Re:I will quit twitter (Score:4, Informative)
Nobody at Apple is stupid enough to buy an SMS service.
Actually, when you phrase it like that, it really makes perfect sense. As a micro-messaging service, it wouldn't make much sense as an Apple property. As something to replace SMS, I would actually see it being a very valuable addition to their lineup as an iPhone customer (provided it stays as open as it is now). Apple has already been able to bully AT&T into giving up MUCH more than anyone would have thought possible simply by being so damn successful over the last few years, it's actually not out of the question that they'd want to push that further.
Of note: I won't pay any extra for SMS messages on my iPhone. The concept of paying $0.25 for 160B of data which is built into the cellular service overhead and costs them absolutely nothing to maintain is absurd. $5/mo for unlimited texting is only slightly less insane. I get 200 texts built into my normal plan (first-gen iPhone) which is fine for what I do. However, it would be a fantastic value-add to get around that entirely by, in effect, replacing the SMS app on the phone with a Twitter client of sorts (at least for direct messages) - even if only to spite AT&T. I already use DMs in favor of SMS for my friends that have a twitter account (most of them) simply because it doesn't count towards my text message limit.
There is, of course, no shortage of Twitter apps on the iPhone (nor most smartforms I think; standard phones can still do it over sms) so it's not much of an issue except for the lack of "push" functionality. I don't know how that will be handled in the 3.0 SDK but I doubt it'll be as seamless as SMS and phone calls are since there's the intermediate server that everything funnels through.
If they could pull off something where they go behind the carriers' backs to make it a free, open protocol to contact cellular phones, it would be awesome. Doesn't matter whether it's Twitter or not, but it's already got a large userbase and is well-suited to the application. The only reason that Twitter is even relevant to the picture is that it seems like the only way to, in effect, make SMS free* - as it should be.
*Maybe a buck a month for unlimited. The current situation where bandwidth to the ISS is cheaper goes well beyond ridiculous. I don't think you could use an entire megabyte of bandwidth a month over SMS.
Re:I will quit twitter (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I will quit twitter (Score:5, Funny)
i could offer you $50 to sell me your genitals
and nothing of value will be lost.
Re:I will quit twitter (Score:5, Insightful)
any privately held company is under no compulsion to sell anything regardless of incentive.
Yeah. Craigslist immediately comes to mind.
The Guardian says this is hot air (Score:5, Interesting)
This Guardian article [guardian.co.uk] argues that the story is complete hot air, the two sources (Tech Crunch and ValleyWag) are both unconvinced themselves and the Twitter execs seem to be in the wrong part of the US to be locked into negotiations with Apple.
Leaving aside whether it is true or not, it seems a very strange fit. Apple doesn't seem to gain very much in its core business from the acquisition
Re:The Guardian says this is hot air (Score:5, Insightful)
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I think Apple and Twitter are a perfect fit.
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Re:The Guardian says this is hot air (Score:4, Insightful)
Hipsters use both.
Re:The Guardian says this is hot air (Score:5, Funny)
I think Apple and Twitter are a perfect fit.
I think Microsoft and Twitter are a perfect fit.
There, fixed it for you.
New rumour:
"Microsoft, after cutting another 3,000 workers today, announced that they will be buying Twitter, the sms service that doesn't know how to make money, with the savings. In a cooperative deal with Disney, it will now be rebranded as TweetyPie Live, and will include such features as Microsoft Office integration.
As Steve Balmer said, "We're excited about this deal. Now you'll be able to update your spreadsheet literally in a tweet. And for all those laid-off Microsofties, you'll be able to dynamically update your resumes from the next version of Word, provided you respect the license not to tweet anything bad or derogatory, or publish negative benchmarks, or say that I need deodorant as much as RMS does.
We're also going to integrate it with Microsoft Live Search so that we can use Microsoft AdVantage to generate more pay-per-click revenue from the tweet stream. And we'll import the smilies from MS - Messenger. And give it a ribbon bar. And embed it in your car mp3 player, so you can tweet-n-drive. This will be big! It has the potential to be the next Zune!
Re:The Guardian says this is hot air (Score:5, Funny)
What happened to the good ol days of Apple speculative rumors, when the rumors were at least plausible?
kdawson?
Re:The Guardian says this is hot air (Score:4, Insightful)
that's why they need twitter, if they control twitter they can make the rumors believable again and this allows them to make more money!
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If a rubbish tabloid site like ValleyWag says it's bunk, then it's not even a shadow of a story.
Re:The Guardian says this is hot air (Score:5, Interesting)
The question then is, who started the rumor? Probably the twitter execs themselves, who are in negotiations with a different party and need some leverage to prop a valuation greater than zero.
One thing is for certain... (Score:2, Funny)
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Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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The typical geek probably doesn't socialize enough to warrant such an opportunity to use something like Twitter, so that's part of the reason why Slashdotters don't understand its appeal.
Slightly trollish, but accurate.
Re:One thing is for certain... (Score:5, Funny)
All the really interesting people were at the real parties.
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Isn't it better to be at a bar with 100 friendly losers than sitting in your moms basement telling Slashdot how useless twitter is?
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It would, at the very least, make for a much better Tweet App on my iPhone....
Unless you believe that the only good tweet app is a dead tweet app.
Why would they want to buy the latest entry in the spamiverse?
Don't care. (Score:4, Insightful)
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Some would say the twitters are the legion of dumb.
One of the Classic Blunders (Score:5, Insightful)
The most famous, of course, is "Never start a land war in Asia," but only slightly less well-known is this: "Just because you can't think of a use for it doesn't mean that no one can."
Value based on what, exactly? (Score:5, Insightful)
And, can Twitter decline an offer that is nearly three times their estimated worth?"
And how exactly was that value derived? Value is based on the present value of future earnings, and AFAIK, twitter has none. Any number in the hundreds of millions of dollars should be seriously looked at. What I don't understand is what Apple would do with Twitter.
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Re:Value based on what, exactly? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do you think a rumor that Apple might buy Twitter would raise it's stock price?
I figured out step #3 (Score:2)
1. Create something slightly different than previous attempts.
2. Create a buzz and make it popular
3. Sell out while the perceived value is high
4. Profit!
Let the smucks at Apple try to figure out how to make mass messaging profitable.
Re:Value based on what, exactly? (Score:5, Insightful)
The value is based on a consistent 24/7 wankfest known as Twitter, and a large base of 21st century snake oil salesmen aka social media commentators.
Want to see what Twitter is really about? Go watch it during a large scale emergency (find out whatever the hashtag is, then watch the bullshit fly in). It's the biggest wankfest in the history of wankfests. Every second comment is something like, "OMG TWITTER HAS COME OF AGE" or "OMG TWITTER IS REALLY SHINING THROUGH ON THIS EMERGENCY".
But when you look past the bullshit, it's just the same shit OVER AND OVER with nothing of value offered whatsoever. People linking to already existing news stories. People retweeting non-sourced rumors. You could subscribe to a variety of RSS news feeds and get the same (but better) information, or go down to the local bar and listen to drunk guy offer his opinion.
I have watched twitter during the Victorian Bushfires, and the recent Israel-Palestine debacle. Both times the majority of the tweets were crap. They didn't offer shit, it was a mish-mash of chaos, rumors, linking to news sources, and poor information.
Seriously, the media severely overplays the value of twitter. Probably cause it's the ultimate representation of the 21st century: mass democracy (everyone has an opinion) + short sound bites for the ADHD/MTV generation = popularity with black rimmed glasses wearing social media nerds.
Don't get me wrong, there are some parts of it that are ok. If you had an existing (closed) social network it'd be alright to communicate to each other (but you could do the same on facebook).
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But when you look past the bullshit, it's just the same shit OVER AND OVER with nothing of value offered whatsoever. People linking to already existing news stories. People retweeting non-sourced rumors. You could subscribe to a variety of RSS news feeds and get the same (but better) information, or go down to the local bar and listen to drunk guy offer his opinion.
So, like CNN then?
Business Plan (Score:5, Interesting)
1) Launch free web service
2) ???
3) Profit
Can someone remind me how Twitter makes money. Or, at least how to justify a $700 million valuation?
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But seriously, the value would be derived exactly how all these other companies are "valued"... with eyeballs... sort of analogous to the late 90's mania. I'm all for tech, but it's pretty tough to make money with no business model whatsoever.
Steve leaves and within six months Apple goes and considers doing something really stupid (allegedly). Just shows you how impo
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Can someone remind me how Twitter makes money. Or, at least how to justify a $700 million valuation?
A few possible ways to derive value:
1) Corporate cockblock - Apple spends a little cash to make sure nobody else turns it into the Next Big Thing in some way that threatens the iPhone.
2) Eyeballs. I'm sure some beancounter will compare this deal to other ones to see how much each pair of eyeballs, or "impression", is worth in terms of valuation.
3) Ad revenue (related to #2). Do some research on how one
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Does any of that amount to $700M?
No.
Re:Business Plan (Score:5, Funny)
So how much would that make goatse worth?
Let's just say its customer retention rate is very, very low. I'd pay $10 for it.
How they COULD make money (Score:5, Interesting)
Find out interesting keywords in what people say they are doing or talking about.
Advertise something local and highly related to that person, in the form of a discount offer or something.
Google ads for the attention-span-of-a-gnat generation?
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I'm sorry, what were we just talking about?
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wut (Score:4, Funny)
I blve we r the smartest gen ever! My parents r dum and read 2$ newspprs 4 hours. I can read 30 secs on tw and get same info 4 0$ on my cpu!
Re:Business Plan (Score:5, Insightful)
The ??? used to be selling the attention you generate on your free service to advertisers. Google AdSense being the most profitable one for many. But it seems like the attention economy [howtonotma...online.com] is coming to an end, or at least the potential has been greatly reduced.
Twitter doesn't include ads in their tweets or even on their website. According to this Create a Revenue Model for Twitter contest [businessinsider.com] they don't generate any revenue.
Twitter isn't worth anything right now other than what investors would like to get back if they sell. I can't think of any way that their customer base could financially benefit any other company. The folks at Twitter seem to be in the same boat since they haven't been able to generate any significant revenue from their users.
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Can someone remind me how Twitter makes money.
Gladly. Volume.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/4258/saturday-night-live-first-citywide-change-bank-1 [hulu.com]
http://www.hulu.com/watch/4253/saturday-night-live-first-citywide-change-bank-2 [hulu.com]
Why? (Score:4, Insightful)
Is there really much point in buying twitter? How difficult a thing is it to write that application? Or is the purpose almost entirely to grab the existing users?
And how would this fit into Apple's strategy? I could think of much better ways that Apple could extend their MobileMe service.
The whole thing seems slightly fishy to me.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Time-Warner didn't buy AOL, they were bought by AOL. So the value of the userbase considerations weren't really comparable to the Apple-Twitter rumor or the Yahoo!-Geocities deal.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
And how many of those millions aren't already included in the millions they have from the iPhone? Or the iTunes Music Store?
No, I don't buy it - and I bet Apple won't either!
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Apple already has a massive user base with macs, ipods and iphones.. this makes no sense, especially since twitter has no revenue or business model.
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Its more than the application. Its the millions of users that come with it.
Screw that. Just add a micro blogging component into the RSS and ATOM specs and join micro blogging with regular blogging. You already have a well known social communication platform with millions of bloggers.
I'm surprised that hasn't happened yet and killed twitter.
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Considering its already been ascertained by Nielsen that Twitter is losing 70% of its userbase after the first month.
It's quite simple: The Emperor is stark naked.
There's nothing to buy. The userbase is next to non-existent -- or will be soon enough.
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That's been said before... I'm thinking MSN.. or MySpace and Facebook. They're all still around.
What I -do- think will happen is that Twitter is too specific in what it does. That makes it reasonably easy to duplicate its functionality and integrate that straight into e.g. MSN or Facebook. There's no reason why you couldn't just 'tweet' what you're doing as your Facebook status. In fact, you already can, but only from within Twitter. If Facebook could hook into twitter on their end - 'log into twitter
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Why?
Oprah? Demi? Kutcher? A bunch of lame politicians pretending to be be cool? A bunch of fickle teenagers that will drop it in favor of the next thing by tomorrow lunchtime?
For Tweeple? Why would anyone want to pay money for that user base? Even in the heady days of the first dot.com bubble Twitter would be obviously vacuous, with no future.
Apple just don't need this waste of bandwidth. No-one does. Especially in the current economy
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It's also a very effective marketing tool, as Oprah and Ellen DeGeneres have shown. In additi
Twitcher (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't know, to me this Twitter tool is really synonymous with some sort of a twitch. Wouldn't the more appropriate name be 'Twitcher' with a slogan: Waiting for your twitch!
Seriously, 700 million USD for this just shows that a dollar is not worth that much today and also it shows that people don't know what else to invest their money into, they would jump on anything, reminds me of selling a pencil at 50% loss but 'making it up in volume'.
Re:Twitcher (Score:4, Insightful)
reminds me of selling a pencil at 50% loss but 'making it up in volume'.
Easy :
The quick buck artist pencil seller:
The scare-monger pencil seller:
The commodities market manipulator pencil seller:
Think of the ads.... (Score:5, Funny)
Hello, this is a yahoo and I'm a twit...
Grab the money and run (Score:5, Insightful)
This reminds me of Novell buying Word Perfect. Paid over a billion dollars, couldn't sell for $100m just years later if their life depended on it. If Twitter refuses the offer, they are dumber than a sack of bricks. In a few years no one will pay attention to them. Just another useless, 15-minute-of-fame "Oprah technology".
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(cough, cough) 700 million dollars (cough, cough). This is not government. Most private companies should have a little better understanding of the value of money.
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Was getting bored with Twitter anyway (Score:5, Insightful)
At first milidly interested in the technology, eventually appalled at the general lack of content.
Or to put it another way, twitter is the sound of millions of people collectively discovering they have nothing important to say. Or in today's "Pickles", "Is it me, or is the world getting sillier and sillier?"
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It's tool, use it for what works for you.
Re:Was getting bored with Twitter anyway (Score:5, Funny)
Have you ever watched shows about tribes of baboons or chimps on PBS? And how they spend so much time grooming each other by picking the lice out of each others' hair?
That's the mental image I get with any social network site. Lots of monkeys, picking the lice out of each others' hair. Except with Twitter, the monkeys shriek about who has found the biggest and juiciest lice, right before they eat them.
How does one value a service like Twitter and Co? (Score:2)
I'm interested in knowing how these numbers like $250m and $700m come about. I see absolutely no monetary value in such services, even the so-called ad-revenue or social data mining models all seem like big loss harbours rather than sources of profit.
Are we back to the late 90s "no business model yet possible future earning potential" view of businesses?
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Are we back to the late 90s "no business model yet possible future earning potential" view of businesses?
Yes.
What value (Score:3, Insightful)
can Apple get out of it that they can't just using the API?
Selling advertising isn't really what Apple does.
I could see Google speculation, although I would rather they implemented there own.
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Selling advertising isn't really what Apple does.
Strangely, it isn't what twitter does either. Twitter has zero sources of revenue. None. They epitomize the dot-com ideal of 'build it now, make money later." We'll see if later ever comes for them.
Brand Name (Score:5, Insightful)
Twitter has a very well known brand-name, probably about half of which comes from people bitching about it, or cracking jokes ("ok poop is coming out"). The application itself is nothing short of a status message, which where defined as early as May, 1993 (RFC 1459 [faqs.org], Section 5.1) or earlier (RFC 742 [faqs.org], December 1977 - finger w/plan), and there are dozens of "microblogging" sites out there already.
If anyone buys Twitter, it will only be for the most over hyped and thus well-known up-and-coming brand names of the last couple years.
Twitter = Narcissistic dog snot (Score:3, Funny)
Then, MacBooks with no FireWire.
Now this.
OK, OK, we get it already. You hate us.
Twitter - "triumph of humanity" (Score:5, Insightful)
Twitter. Triumph of humanity [apple.com]
I admit I don't get the fascination.
Technically, its DIY IRC channel meets party-line SMS. Cool. The "how" I get.
But WHY? The "why" completely escapes me. Is Twitter more profound than the inanity of IRC and the incessant texting of pubescent students on public transport?
At best it looks like a way to share spontaneous brain dumps with mates, at worst it seems like a pathetic attempt at social closeness between a bunch of strangers you wouldn't even look at if you bumped into them.
Whatever it is - if Twitter is humanity's triumph then we're f**ked.
Either that or I'm an old fart.
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...
Either that or I'm an old fart.
your nick confirm the second option
--
eating bats rules !
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I work from home and I am relatively secluded during my work day. I am not a social butterfly by any means, but I like to talk and socialize to take a small break. Twitter gives me the opportunity to have those quick social interactions during my work-day.
I am a
Re:Twitter - "triumph of humanity" (Score:4, Insightful)
http://search.twitter.com/ [twitter.com]
Want to know what's happening right now in that major sporting event (or get an update on a somewhat more obscure sporting event)? Want to hear people's views on that great episode of the TV show you just watched, or the latest takes and interesting links on the world's breaking news events.
If there's buzz about anything or anyone worth buzzing about, you can get it in real time. The world's opinions, raw and unfiltered, aggregated instantly.
I've been plodding around the Internet for 15 year, and this is the closest I've seen to something that lets you feel the pulse of the beast.
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To the celebrity-obsessed, it allows following of celebrities like no gossip-rag ever could.
That's it right there, you nailed it. Twitter is a tool to help people follow the lives of other people. That's why it seems like it has little to no worth for people who are more interested in living their own lives than following others.
Twitter and Apple (Score:2)
Apple is very close to the point of self-parody.
Totally bogus (Score:2, Interesting)
First off, it's not even rumor-mongering -- it's some hack making shit up to increase his pageviews.
Secondly, it's a stupid idea.
Thirdly, it ain't gonna happen.
Fourthly, everyone expects Apple to buy everything (Sony, Nintendo, Be, Sun, Palm, ...) and they generally don't.
Fifthly, who cares? Twitter's already over. The "cool" people have moved on to hype other new stuff (remember Blogs? remember Podcasts?)
twitterverse? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:twitterverse? (Score:5, Funny)
It must have been someone from the blogosphere *ducks*
It Would be Nice... (Score:3, Insightful)
if you have to ask... (Score:3, Insightful)
Sure, why not?
Why does the rumor mill, mass media, and business world assume that every company that strikes oil on the Internet need to be bought by a larger corporate entity once they've proven their worth? Not that I'm a huge fan of Twitter or anything, but the owners of the company have every goddamn reason not to sell the whole thing to behemoth like Apple.
Sure, they can cash out and get their millions of dollars now. Or, they can use their brains and make Twitter into a solid, consistent business model and make many more millions over the course of years or decades. Do you honestly think Google or Red Hat or Amazon would still be around if they sold out to the first bidder to come along? If Twitter wants to use its current success to build a foundation for a stable long-term company, they must remain agile and simply cannot let some big corporation tell them what's best.
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A little internet paleontology for you- Back in the days of IE4 "push" technology was the next big thing and PointCast was the big player in push. They turned down a $450 million purchase offer because they figured they could do better. The market for "push" tanked and they turned down ever lower offers and in the end I think they got about $7 mil.
news flash! (Score:5, Funny)
Apple wants the sockpuppets (Score:4, Funny)
Same DNA, same monetization ideas. An RIAA killer. (Score:3, Interesting)
From that page on apple's site about twitter clearly Apple thinks they have a similar dna.
What could it be used for? Well here's an idea called "Screw the RIAA".
In this monetization possibility (or fantasy you decide), Apple makes twitter groups for every rock band performance in the world, and anybody can twit on it about going there, the band can put special info and links to its site on it, you can basically start an indie craze from nothing.
Now Twitter makes me gag and I would hate using it or being forced to read it. But, it might be neat if you opened it to a lot of people per channel and used it to focus interest, the way usenet groups used to, and you can maybe make anybody with an Apple iphone etc. become a potential uploader to some flash crowd twitter group.
These band appearances and twitter threads lead people to the band's site for info, and to iTunes to download the band's stuff for money, and this is a realization of the model that everyone has talked about for ages about how to screw the RIAA and get bands to communicate and sell directly to their fans. Same could go for films, books, etc.
Only thing is, I don't see any reason why you couldn't build the same thing (twitter lookalike, easy, and iTunes type sales portal, not so easy). I suppose having the hardware and iTunes associations already, and the mass and early to market edge, might be enough to make Apple take a chunk out of the RIAA's sales and give authors a higher income. That and the advertising for ipods, iphones and iTunes, would be neat and might be worth the cash.
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Twitter is hugely popular and has no earthly idea how to capitalize on that popularity without killing itself. It's like every other Web fad, before long it's going to fade away and be replaced by something at least as inane as it is.
The only hope for the Twitter founders is to sell to someone with deep pockets and few brains as quickly as possible. I don't know why Apple would want it, but maybe some old media company with more money than brains would.
Is it hugely popular? (Score:5, Interesting)
There was an article recently that said most twits quit a month after joining. How popular is it relative to facebook? myspace? friendster? My own impression is that it isn't very popular, it just has some very vocal users.
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