A Sea Of Red

Two important tech blogs, TechCrunch and ValleyWag, both reported early Tuesday that Apple was making a $700 million play for the microblogging Web site, the hottest company in Silicon Valley since, well, Facebook (which did actually try to buy Twitter last year).

"Apple is in late stage negotiations to buy Twitter and is hoping to announce it at WWDC [Apple's World Wide Developers Conference] in June," said TechCrunch's unnamed but "normally reliable source."

$700 million. Wow.



http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,518969,00.html

Hey, now I can hate two annoying things at once.

TDDance234 wrote:

Two important tech blogs, TechCrunch and ValleyWag, both reported early Tuesday that Apple was making a $700 million play for the microblogging Web site, the hottest company in Silicon Valley since, well, Facebook (which did actually try to buy Twitter last year).

"Apple is in late stage negotiations to buy Twitter and is hoping to announce it at WWDC [Apple's World Wide Developers Conference] in June," said TechCrunch's unnamed but "normally reliable source."

$700 million. Wow.



http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,518969,00.html

I have a better idea. They can give ME the $700 million and be on their way

RagingTireFire wrote:Hey, now I can hate two annoying things at once.

Kind of like when 1971 uses emoticons

Hold My Own wrote:

RagingTireFire wrote:Hey, now I can hate two annoying things at once.

Kind of like when 1971 uses emoticons

It seems like a natural fit. Apple caters to the fan base of people who feel the need to be the center of attention and want everyone around them to know what they're doing. I mean, have you ever met an Apple user who doesn't tell everyone that they're an Apple user? And thus, proclaim their superiority?

TWEET! Lol! Bob just got the blue screen of death. I don't have that problem w/ my MAC! ROFLCOPTER!!

OK...here is the question...why is Twitter worth $700 million? Currently there is no advertising on the site at all. Do you pay that kind of money with the intent of adding ads? Other than that, what is the draw?

HenryGale wrote:OK...here is the question...why is Twitter worth $700 million? Currently there is no advertising on the site at all. Do you pay that kind of money with the intent of adding ads? Other than that, what is the draw?

Maybe the information on Twitter's servers is what they're after?

HenryGale wrote:OK...here is the question...why is Twitter worth $700 million?

It's not.

Twitter was recently valued at $250 million (http://www.masshightech.com/stories/200 ... -250M.html). They just turned down an offer from Google, which would have been a better fit than Apple.

Evan Williams has already made a fortune building companies and selling them (Blogger and Odeo are the two that come to mind right away, but there may have been more); I'm not sure he cares that much about making another big sale. I think it's more about leaving a legacy (although he IS the guy that coined the term 'blogger,' so I'd have thought that would be enough). Biz Stone was involved in all of those ventures, so I assume he's pretty set financially. In short, I'm not sure that they're willing to sell Twitter just yet. If anything, it would be more of a partnership than a buyout.

There is monetization potential in Twitter; offer corporate accounts for a fee, for instance, with a different interface that would be easily customized for corporate use. I don't think ads will ever be a major revenue draw. Personally, I think they should have licensed use of the Twitter API -- there are a ton of applications that use it, and that's a revenue stream that they could have exploited. Of course, that probably would have meant that TweetDeck, Seesmic Desktop, Twitterberry, etc. would not have been free.

They're going to have to start making money at some point soon -- if for no other reason than to keep increasing servers to meet demand. But they also have to consider the venture capitalists that have funded them so far -- they're going to want some kind of return on their investment.

This thread makes me happy because no one in it knows what they're talking about.

TDDance234 wrote:

TechCrunch Source wrote:"Apple is in late stage negotiations to buy Twitter and is hoping to announce it at WWDC [Apple's World Wide Developers Conference] in June," said TechCrunch's unnamed but "normally reliable source."

Or Twitter isn't actually for sale at all...

http://www.reuters.com/article/deborahC ... 5920090507

Ed Dantes wrote:Apple caters to the fan base of people who feel the need to be the center of attention and want everyone around them to know what they're doing.

Or people who don't mind paying for quality...

http://www.informationweek.com/news/har ... ction=News

http://gizmodo.com/5237600/jd-power-and ... tisfaction

phoenix wrote:They're going to have to start making money at some point soon -- if for no other reason than to keep increasing servers to meet demand. But they also have to consider the venture capitalists that have funded them so far -- they're going to want some kind of return on their investment.

Or the VC's are just asking for the product to continue develop in hopes of a buyout a la the Google/YouTube deal...

http://pulse2.com/2009/02/16/no-profit- ... 0-million/

And even if that's not their plan, I've read in several places that they've got enough VC to ride it out. They have a business model deployed in Japan. They have options. They're just not ready to talk about them yet and I don't blame them.

Carry on.

You need to go back to your 'sensitive' avatar.

El Scorcho wrote:This thread makes me happy because no one in it knows what they're talking about.

TDDance234 wrote:

TechCrunch Source wrote:"Apple is in late stage negotiations to buy Twitter and is hoping to announce it at WWDC [Apple's World Wide Developers Conference] in June," said TechCrunch's unnamed but "normally reliable source."

Or Twitter isn't actually for sale at all...

http://www.reuters.com/article/deborahC ... 5920090507

Ed Dantes wrote:Apple caters to the fan base of people who feel the need to be the center of attention and want everyone around them to know what they're doing.

Or people who don't mind paying for quality...



http://gizmodo.com/5237600/jd-power-and ... tisfaction

phoenix wrote:They're going to have to start making money at some point soon -- if for no other reason than to keep increasing servers to meet demand. But they also have to consider the venture capitalists that have funded them so far -- they're going to want some kind of return on their investment.

Or the VC's are just asking for the product to continue develop in hopes of a buyout a la the Google/YouTube deal...

http://pulse2.com/2009/02/16/no-profit- ... 0-million/

And even if that's not their plan, I've read in several places that they've got enough VC to ride it out. They have a business model deployed in Japan. They have options. They're just not ready to talk about them yet and I don't blame them.

Carry on.

and the resident Mac user comes in for the knockout punch!



it'd be cool if Apple bought Twitter, but what would they do w/ it? I can already tweet from my iTouch or my Macbook. How would this change things?

ALUmnus wrote:You need to go back to your 'sensitive' avatar.

You say that as if I acted personally offended. Quite the contrary. I laughed.

I think you just wanted to say you have an itouch and a macbook.

JMUDukes wrote:it'd be cool if Apple bought Twitter...

I don't know if I agree, but I would prefer them over Google.

mrmacphisto wrote:

JMUDukes wrote:it'd be cool if Apple bought Twitter...

I don't know if I agree, but I would prefer them over Google.

+1