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Apple Reportedly Considering Huge Investment In Twitter
The NY Times reports that Apple has internally discussed an investment into Twitter to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. From the article:
"There is no guarantee that the two companies, which are not in negotiations at the moment, will come to an agreement. But the earlier talks are a sign that they may form a stronger partnership amid intensifying competition from the likes of Google and Facebook. Apple has not made many friends in social media. Its relationship with Facebook, for example, has been strained since a deal to build Facebook features into Ping, Apple's music-centric social network, fell apart. Facebook is also aligned with Microsoft, which owns a small stake in it. And Google, an Apple rival in the phone market, has been pushing its own social network, Google Plus. 'Apple doesn't have to own a social network,' Timothy D. Cook, Apple’s chief executive, said at a recent technology conference. 'But does Apple need to be social? Yes.'"
It's not chump change by any means, but - Apple spending a few hundred million dollars on ANYTHING hardly qualifies as a "huge investment". They've got - what - something like $100 billion in the bank?
#DeleteChrome
With all of their assets in the bank, they could do more R&D or they can start absorbing other companies. Looks like we know what their plan is now; I expect Apple technology to be at the same level as everybody else, from here on out.
actually use twitter? In my mind, all it is is vendor-locked-down RSS feeds for monkeys with short attention spans. Does that intersect with Apple's userbase at all?
Now I'll _have_ on to Google plus..
With Apple's huge pile of cash they could shell out a few bucks to improve their file manager. It's a child's toy compared to what it should have evolved into by now. The path bar is something so sad that even I could have designed it. The dock is nasty, too. And they could add some preference options for people who come from normal computing backgrounds -i.e., ones where the Home and End keys actually move to the beginning and end of the current line. Gee, that'd be awesome, wouldn't it? It won't even cost much, either. But will Apple lift so much as a finger to even consider improving what they already have in lieu of dreaming up more shiny to distract users from the fact that some aspects of their OS have been crappy from day one??? Nope. Because they're utterly hopeless. I'll stick to my Linux, thanks.
With all of their assets in the bank, they could do more R&D or they can start absorbing other companies.
Apple can do both R&D and acquisition. And they can do it with cash, they don't even need to go into debt. They have over $US110 billion in cash.
What if apple bought it(or just enough stake in it) to changed that?
Each tweet now subject to the rigourous reviews of Apple, for quality control (and mind control).
I fail to see anything but Dutch tulips in this. What can Apple possibly gain here, in real terms, not "Uhm we need to be social" lingo?
I could understand Google's, FB's, even MS' interest; they all found ways to monetize eyeballs, even though FB is still trying to mature and Bing seems to be moving backwards. But Apple? They sell high-end hipster equipment. What do they need a free SMS spamming service for? I can already tell the world what I had for breakfast and which mobile device I elected to publish this momentous bit of information with, I'm not sure more integration will make my customer experience better in any meaningful way.
To the coming of the MacTwits.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
Twitter is a marketing tool for brands and industry. It's a dream mechanism for them: a fan, or anyone with a slight interest in the product/brand/artist, is encouraged to "follow" the appropriate twitter stream, and so is thereby locked into a steady barrage of product updates designed to also reinforce the vendor/customer relationship by adding the semblance of making it "personal.'
Of course, there are many Tweeters who aren't selling anything; theirs are the buyers' eyeballs being marketed to the sellers. It is important to make them feel like they are more than hipster consumers, and Twitter -- along with a Dutiful Media -- has done a great job in convincing them that their own tweets mean something, much in the same way that, 4-5 years ago, YouTube and the Dutiful Media managed to convince the world that bored suburban teenagers lip-synching to Aqua's "Barbie Girl" was somehow Art. "Citizen Journalists" have replaced the "User-Generated Content Makers," to the great amusement of the professional artists and creators whose pockets they continue to line.
I wonder is it possible that in return for Apple heavily investing in Twitter, Twitter moves its data servers to one of the big server farms Apple operates. That way, Twitter has the capacity to handle even more message loads.