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Apple Rumored To Want To Buy Twitter
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?"
and nothing of value will be lost.
How we know is more important than what we know.
Twitter could be owned by the legion of doom and it still wouldn't make it interesting or remotely useful.
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.
If you can read this... 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100111 01100101 01100101 01101011
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.
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'.
You can't handle the truth.
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".
End anonymous moderation and posting on
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?"
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Its more than the application. Its the millions of users that come with it.
Take a lesson from the founders of Skype, who sold it to Ebay and are probably laughing still.
Twitter doesn't fit in with Apple's core business model, and Apple doesn't seem to like wasting money and time on stuff that doesn't make them lots of money in return. What happened to the good ol days of Apple speculative rumors, when the rumors were at least plausible?
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.
And so did GeoCities and AOL but that didn't work out too well for Yahoo and Time Warner respectively. Users are fickle. They will move to other apps as trends dictate. Really I don't see the benefit to Apple. Now Apple might be talking to Twitter about better collaboration and integration.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
You need a life. Twitter is the most useless waste of time and human resource. It is the domain of those with no personal life because they want everyone else to know when they take a toilet break.
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 might attach an ad to twitter messages. Possibly very short ads attached to the end of the messages? Possibly with opt-in text ads (need to make them of actual interest to user).
4) Iphone exclusives. Make Twitter better with some sort of iPhone integration. I'm sure the Apple folks could do something creative there better than I could speculate. In that case, the valuation would be related to the expected bump in iPhone sales, or upselling of plans.
Does any of that amount to $700M? Who knows.
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!
Culture is more than commerce
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.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
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 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 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.
Dual Opteron < $600
Hmmm.. I imagine that if I had 29 BILLION dollars burning a hole in my pocket, I might consider buying the single most talked about web trend in current times; if for nothing more than to make my parent company among the most talked about things in current times. Good business sense.
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, Section 5.1) or earlier (RFC 742, 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.
CAn'T CompreHend SARcaSm?
Twitter. Triumph of humanity
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.
3 times the *sellers'* estimation of twitter's worth. To me, twitter ain't worth .
I'd like to meet the person that coined the word "twitterverse". And hurt them. A lot.
They wouldn't even have to make money directly off Twitter. Apple has been drowning in their attempts to launch web services. Twitter could be the killer app and ecosystem they need to make MobileMe or future efforts less weak. It's flawed reasoning to think companies need to make money directly off all their properties. Blue chip companies hold properties like racing teams that are fiscal black holes used for the marketing and prestige they bring the company.
I would be nice if people could come up with vaguely realistic Apple rumours to increase their page hits rather than inane drivel like this. If anyone even remotely thinks this rumour is true then they have absolutely no clue. Period.
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.
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!
IranAir Flight 655 never forget!
Hipsters use both.
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."
So they should buy a company to get the users that they already have?
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.
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?