Ask the question why? And try to come up with a real answer. It provokes interesting thoughts, well at least in me it does. Just think for a second, why? (and leave out doubt). Why? There are possible reasons, quite a few. Think.
Or ask the question, why would Google want to buy Twitter?
Agreed. Anyone who just says, "I don't see the point," Is either being short-sighted or vain. Just because you can't think of the use doesn't mean nobody can.
I can see it getting wrapped into applications like iTunes and iPhoto. Share your playing song, share photos. Like others said, part of MMS on the iPhone. Part something we don't know about yet...
And doing exactly that via Twitter is superior... how?
For the Twits out there (very appropriate verbiage, btw), PLEASE educate me. I'm only being half sarcastic there. I need to have someone who ostensibly understands this service explain its value to me.
I feel the same about Facebook, yet you find it useful. Point is, these things are subjective. Whether its worth $700 million is another matter.
Agreed. Anyone who just says, "I don't see the point," Is either being short-sighted or vain. Just because you can't think of the use doesn't mean nobody can.
I can see it getting wrapped into applications like iTunes and iPhoto. Share your playing song, share photos. Like others said, part of MMS on the iPhone. Part something we don't know about yet...
Just because you don't see the value in it means you must be short sighted or vain? What about option 3 - that you don't see the value in it because there isn't any value in it? Oh no, that's not possible huh?
BTW your vision of twitter wrapped into those apps sounds like my idea of hell. Why the hell do I want to know what's going on in everyone else's life all the time?
twitter = meeting new ppl who are into the same things as you
of ~600 followers and 700 ppl i follow I maybe personally know 10 of them.
twitter is a great source for getting news and updates.. (i found this story via twitter) I barely use twitter for communicating with friends, but more for the tweets from tech blogs and news sites etc.. i hardly get or follow ppl that post "just got a late in the airport" LOL
anyway - with one tweet you can push messages to ppl on phones via SMS, email or web/pc/mac all from the same client, i dont have time to visit every teck blog, news site or other sites i visit, twitter allows me to get all the headlines in one place and not from separate feeds in a rss reader. this to me is VERY useful. whats also cool is that i can reply or forward/retweet these tweets..
Apple clearly would have some idea how to capitalize on this if they are looking to acquire. cause 700m is allot for a free value added service.
unfortunately if Apple buys twitter, they may want to charge for subscriptions to the service or something.. which would suck
Just because you don't see the value in it means you must be short sighted or vain? What about option 3 - that you don't see the value in it because there isn't any value in it? Oh no, that's not possible huh?
BTW your vision of twitter wrapped into those apps sounds like my idea of hell. Why the hell do I want to know what's going on in everyone else's life all the time?
Option 3 is possible, but it's a far less likely scenario. I stick to what you quoted me on. If everyone had a knee-jerk reaction that everything sucks nothing would evolve. It sounds like the guy who thought everything had been invented already.
Maybe I could have worded it better: If you refuse to acknowledge that it might have potential you're short-sighted. Or vain. To just shut it down upon reading this article? I wouldn't want to think that way.
The only way I can see this making sense is if they think its value will increase and they can sell it for a profit, as they did with their position in Akamai a few years back. But it seems extremely unlikely.
Unless Apple can stay true to its customers and have Twitter?s loyal users? best interests at heart, and make Twitter better instead of commercializing it, the already highly debated (love it or hate it!) micro-blogging service will see its fall. I highly doubt Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, and Biz Stone would want to see that happen, for just $700 million."
Wow. Just wow. Would 3 (I assume young) guys sell their young, unprofitable business for "just" $700 MILLION DOLLARS? Can you even imagine being in their shoes? If someone offered you twice your current salary for a new job, would you be able to turn it down? I think it would be really hard NOT to "sell out" (which is not what they being asked to do in any case) for close a BILLION dollars. Get real. As others have said Twitter could be worthless in a few year (or hugely successful), so it's not like cashing out would be crazy.
If they were going to do that (haha no), they may as well buy up TinyURL, Meebo and maybe 4chan for good measure. It would make about as much sense to their business.
...BTW your vision of twitter wrapped into those apps sounds like my idea of hell. Why the hell do I want to know what's going on in everyone else's life all the time?
So because of your stance nobody should make apps for people who DO want to know what's going in each other's lives? Clearly there's a market for that kind of thing. I don't use Facebook, but I think some people do.
Thank God some people here agree with me as to the boringness of Twitter. I think it has its purpose, but telling me whatever mundane task you are up to is something I care nothing about and I have to see that crap to get to the good stuff (that rarely exists in Twitter). I'd rather use email, IM, Facebook, blogs, or any of the other established methods of online communication.
I don't mean to be insulting, but I think one must be really bored to bust out their iPhone and send out a Twitter to all their friends telling them something like "This coffee is really doing the trick" - an actual tweet I once received. Why is there so much tweeting about coffee? I mean, who the F*@# cares? If that's your thing, then cool, but it isn't for me. And yes, I have tried it for a while... and yes, this is just my opinion.
Needless to say, I hope Apple doesn't waste their resources on Twitter. We all know they love it, though. They describe it as a "Triumph of Humanity" on the Apple website.... please.
Thank God some people here agree with me as to the boringness of Twitter. I think it has its purpose, but telling me whatever mundane task you are up to is something I care nothing about and I have to see that crap to get to the good stuff (that rarely exists in Twitter). I'd rather use email, IM, Facebook, blogs, or any of the other established methods of online communication.....
If Apple just wanted to use Twitter as it is they wouldn't need to buy it. I assume they'd be making some major changes over time.
While I don't think Twitter is as exciting as many other people do - it could evolve into something else. Apple applications could act as a front-end to Twitter distribution of media content. It might be easier for some to understand than RSS. I'm surprised at how many Internet junkies no nothing about RSS, but they know what Twitter is.
Wow. Just wow. Would 3 (I assume young) guys sell their young, unprofitable business for "just" $700 MILLION DOLLARS? Can you even imagine being in their shoes? If someone offered you twice your current salary for a new job, would you be able to turn it down? I think it would be really hard NOT to "sell out" (which is not what they being asked to do in any case) for close a BILLION dollars. Get real. As others have said Twitter could be worthless in a few year (or hugely successful), so it's not like cashing out would be crazy.
Yes, it is A LOT of money, but these three guys are quite inspirational people, and I dunno, I would think that they treasure Twitter a heck a lot. That's why Jack Dorsey turned it down from Google's $500 million, I believe is the sum.
as it is the service is completely unusable after you follow 200-300 people. i had to create several accounts to organize things. one is for news tweets from CNN, LA Times, NY Times, etc. one if for sports, one for celebs and VIPs, one for tech news and one for my own use and for regular people
i use ubertwitter on my blackeberry for my news account. it runs in the background and caches the tweets for me to read on the train to/from work. big battery hog as well, the Apple guys weren't kidding when they said background apps suck the battery dry.
the others i read on the website or via tweetdeck or seesmic
Last year twitter would crash several times a day, but after they moved to Amazon's cloud computing platform it seems a lot better.
i don't know about the kindle, but twitter is a killer news delivery service. a lot of organizations also use it for business. i noticed that almost every chamber of commerce in the US is on twitter and uses it to communicate and send out messages
Agreed. Anyone who just says, "I don't see the point," Is either being short-sighted or vain. Just because you can't think of the use doesn't mean nobody can.
I can see it getting wrapped into applications like iTunes and iPhoto. Share your playing song, share photos. Like others said, part of MMS on the iPhone. Part something we don't know about yet...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Twitter.com
What is Twitter?
Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co?workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?
So Twitter defines itself as a way to broadcast to friends, family and co-workers "What you're doing".
I can see how this could serve many uses for Apple.
1) As walshbj mentioned itunes status..."Ben just purchased Blah Blah Blah by That Band"
2) iPhone Gaming..."Ben is playing Crash Bandicoot Racing. Click here to race."
3) On the desktop, I could see this being integrated into iChat.
4) On the iPhone I could see Apple including a basic Twitter client and incorporating status updates into almost all of their apps.
5) On the web it could be branded as part of MobileMe
6) WWDC: Apple Push Notification Service = Twitter
On the whole of it, I think Twitter makes more sense for Google and integration with gmail and their forthcoming GrandCentral tech.
Nothing more annoying when some indulgent twit occupies my whole Facebook page letting me and the rest of their 6000 close friends know that they just arrived at the airport, bought a latte or whatever else totally boring thing they just did.
Agreed. The only "friends" I've blacklisted on Facebook (so I don't have to read their status updates) are those who update their status 20 times a day.
All Facebook would need to do (assuming they don't just buy Twitter themselves) is simply add a new feature to your Home page to allow you to select those friends, and groups you are fans of, and get their status updates sent to your phone/email instead of getting the updates for everyone on your Home page. You could create a friends/fans list as a subset of your overall friends list and tell Facebook to send just those status updates.
Or, since many people are already on Facebook already, just give them better filtering cababilities on their Home page. Both Facebook and Twitter are losing money currently. I don't see both being independently viable. There is too much overlap between their service and not enough ad revenue to go around.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Alonso Perez
How do you send a message from an iPhone to a Mac user? You can send an e-mail, but that requires more writing (a subject, etc.).
There is no good platform that integrates the Internet with the phone network for short messages. Chat is not the same; you need to open a chat window for each person you want to receive messages from, and you usually converse briefly with them.
A "short message e-mail" system with integration with phone network SMS and broadcast capability could (I emphasize could) make sense for Apple and it's iPhone system. It does seem like a smallish niche, but maybe not.
By the way, I'm not a Twitter user either and it does seem kind of pointless on its own. People apparently get bored with it and drop out at high rates. It does feel like a fad. We'll see.
Well, let's see... you could send an email with just a subject line and no body. There is your short message email system. Also, you can easily send an SMS to an email account and send an email to a phone as an SMS. That would be missing the broadcast capability (similar to what Facebook already has), but maybe something based on RSS? Or you could just base it on email and provide an online service to manage your subscriptions (ie, add yourself to other people's group email distribution lists).
I fail to see how Twitter is nothing more than a very slight twist on services which are already available (email, Facebook, RSS feeds, etc). Why do we need another proprietary system. What we need is someone to better organize/integrate existing services which are based on existing standards.
Hmmm, sounds like a job for Apple. But they certainly don't need to buy Twitter to do it.
Not gonna happen. Get real, people. $700m, or more? Please. Let's see some semblance of a profitable business model come from Twitter, then we'll talk acquisition. Apple has better things to do with their cash, such as buying semicondcutor companies and the like. Not unproven "micro-blogging" sites. Let's get a reliable source for these rumors too - the tech blogosphere does not count.
Comments
Ask the question why? And try to come up with a real answer. It provokes interesting thoughts, well at least in me it does. Just think for a second, why? (and leave out doubt). Why? There are possible reasons, quite a few. Think.
Or ask the question, why would Google want to buy Twitter?
Agreed. Anyone who just says, "I don't see the point," Is either being short-sighted or vain. Just because you can't think of the use doesn't mean nobody can.
I can see it getting wrapped into applications like iTunes and iPhoto. Share your playing song, share photos. Like others said, part of MMS on the iPhone. Part something we don't know about yet...
And doing exactly that via Twitter is superior... how?
For the Twits out there (very appropriate verbiage, btw), PLEASE educate me. I'm only being half sarcastic there. I need to have someone who ostensibly understands this service explain its value to me.
I feel the same about Facebook, yet you find it useful. Point is, these things are subjective. Whether its worth $700 million is another matter.
Agreed. Anyone who just says, "I don't see the point," Is either being short-sighted or vain. Just because you can't think of the use doesn't mean nobody can.
I can see it getting wrapped into applications like iTunes and iPhoto. Share your playing song, share photos. Like others said, part of MMS on the iPhone. Part something we don't know about yet...
Just because you don't see the value in it means you must be short sighted or vain? What about option 3 - that you don't see the value in it because there isn't any value in it? Oh no, that's not possible huh?
BTW your vision of twitter wrapped into those apps sounds like my idea of hell. Why the hell do I want to know what's going on in everyone else's life all the time?
If Apple wants to buy it means they have good reason. Maybe they see something in Twitter that others don't.
Twitter is very up to Apple's style. Apple loves simplicity. Twitter is just that.
twitter = meeting new ppl who are into the same things as you
of ~600 followers and 700 ppl i follow I maybe personally know 10 of them.
twitter is a great source for getting news and updates.. (i found this story via twitter) I barely use twitter for communicating with friends, but more for the tweets from tech blogs and news sites etc.. i hardly get or follow ppl that post "just got a late in the airport" LOL
anyway - with one tweet you can push messages to ppl on phones via SMS, email or web/pc/mac all from the same client, i dont have time to visit every teck blog, news site or other sites i visit, twitter allows me to get all the headlines in one place and not from separate feeds in a rss reader. this to me is VERY useful. whats also cool is that i can reply or forward/retweet these tweets..
Apple clearly would have some idea how to capitalize on this if they are looking to acquire. cause 700m is allot for a free value added service.
unfortunately if Apple buys twitter, they may want to charge for subscriptions to the service or something.. which would suck
Naaah... I don't see it happening, besides CNN owns 20% of Twitter already.
Well then, Apple will buy CNN too. Ohh wait, it's already owned by US Government. Darn...
Just because you don't see the value in it means you must be short sighted or vain? What about option 3 - that you don't see the value in it because there isn't any value in it? Oh no, that's not possible huh?
BTW your vision of twitter wrapped into those apps sounds like my idea of hell. Why the hell do I want to know what's going on in everyone else's life all the time?
Option 3 is possible, but it's a far less likely scenario. I stick to what you quoted me on. If everyone had a knee-jerk reaction that everything sucks nothing would evolve. It sounds like the guy who thought everything had been invented already.
Maybe I could have worded it better: If you refuse to acknowledge that it might have potential you're short-sighted. Or vain. To just shut it down upon reading this article? I wouldn't want to think that way.
Unless Apple can stay true to its customers and have Twitter?s loyal users? best interests at heart, and make Twitter better instead of commercializing it, the already highly debated (love it or hate it!) micro-blogging service will see its fall. I highly doubt Jack Dorsey, Evan Williams, and Biz Stone would want to see that happen, for just $700 million."
Wow. Just wow. Would 3 (I assume young) guys sell their young, unprofitable business for "just" $700 MILLION DOLLARS? Can you even imagine being in their shoes? If someone offered you twice your current salary for a new job, would you be able to turn it down? I think it would be really hard NOT to "sell out" (which is not what they being asked to do in any case) for close a BILLION dollars. Get real. As others have said Twitter could be worthless in a few year (or hugely successful), so it's not like cashing out would be crazy.
...BTW your vision of twitter wrapped into those apps sounds like my idea of hell. Why the hell do I want to know what's going on in everyone else's life all the time?
So because of your stance nobody should make apps for people who DO want to know what's going in each other's lives? Clearly there's a market for that kind of thing. I don't use Facebook, but I think some people do.
I don't mean to be insulting, but I think one must be really bored to bust out their iPhone and send out a Twitter to all their friends telling them something like "This coffee is really doing the trick" - an actual tweet I once received. Why is there so much tweeting about coffee? I mean, who the F*@# cares? If that's your thing, then cool, but it isn't for me. And yes, I have tried it for a while... and yes, this is just my opinion.
Needless to say, I hope Apple doesn't waste their resources on Twitter. We all know they love it, though. They describe it as a "Triumph of Humanity" on the Apple website.... please.
Thank God some people here agree with me as to the boringness of Twitter. I think it has its purpose, but telling me whatever mundane task you are up to is something I care nothing about and I have to see that crap to get to the good stuff (that rarely exists in Twitter). I'd rather use email, IM, Facebook, blogs, or any of the other established methods of online communication.....
If Apple just wanted to use Twitter as it is they wouldn't need to buy it. I assume they'd be making some major changes over time.
While I don't think Twitter is as exciting as many other people do - it could evolve into something else. Apple applications could act as a front-end to Twitter distribution of media content. It might be easier for some to understand than RSS. I'm surprised at how many Internet junkies no nothing about RSS, but they know what Twitter is.
Wow. Just wow. Would 3 (I assume young) guys sell their young, unprofitable business for "just" $700 MILLION DOLLARS? Can you even imagine being in their shoes? If someone offered you twice your current salary for a new job, would you be able to turn it down? I think it would be really hard NOT to "sell out" (which is not what they being asked to do in any case) for close a BILLION dollars. Get real. As others have said Twitter could be worthless in a few year (or hugely successful), so it's not like cashing out would be crazy.
Yes, it is A LOT of money, but these three guys are quite inspirational people, and I dunno, I would think that they treasure Twitter a heck a lot. That's why Jack Dorsey turned it down from Google's $500 million, I believe is the sum.
as it is the service is completely unusable after you follow 200-300 people. i had to create several accounts to organize things. one is for news tweets from CNN, LA Times, NY Times, etc. one if for sports, one for celebs and VIPs, one for tech news and one for my own use and for regular people
i use ubertwitter on my blackeberry for my news account. it runs in the background and caches the tweets for me to read on the train to/from work. big battery hog as well, the Apple guys weren't kidding when they said background apps suck the battery dry.
the others i read on the website or via tweetdeck or seesmic
Last year twitter would crash several times a day, but after they moved to Amazon's cloud computing platform it seems a lot better.
i don't know about the kindle, but twitter is a killer news delivery service. a lot of organizations also use it for business. i noticed that almost every chamber of commerce in the US is on twitter and uses it to communicate and send out messages
Agreed. Anyone who just says, "I don't see the point," Is either being short-sighted or vain. Just because you can't think of the use doesn't mean nobody can.
I can see it getting wrapped into applications like iTunes and iPhoto. Share your playing song, share photos. Like others said, part of MMS on the iPhone. Part something we don't know about yet...
What is Twitter?
Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co?workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing?
So Twitter defines itself as a way to broadcast to friends, family and co-workers "What you're doing".
I can see how this could serve many uses for Apple.
1) As walshbj mentioned itunes status..."Ben just purchased Blah Blah Blah by That Band"
2) iPhone Gaming..."Ben is playing Crash Bandicoot Racing. Click here to race."
3) On the desktop, I could see this being integrated into iChat.
4) On the iPhone I could see Apple including a basic Twitter client and incorporating status updates into almost all of their apps.
5) On the web it could be branded as part of MobileMe
6) WWDC: Apple Push Notification Service = Twitter
On the whole of it, I think Twitter makes more sense for Google and integration with gmail and their forthcoming GrandCentral tech.
Nothing more annoying when some indulgent twit occupies my whole Facebook page letting me and the rest of their 6000 close friends know that they just arrived at the airport, bought a latte or whatever else totally boring thing they just did.
Agreed. The only "friends" I've blacklisted on Facebook (so I don't have to read their status updates) are those who update their status 20 times a day.
All Facebook would need to do (assuming they don't just buy Twitter themselves) is simply add a new feature to your Home page to allow you to select those friends, and groups you are fans of, and get their status updates sent to your phone/email instead of getting the updates for everyone on your Home page. You could create a friends/fans list as a subset of your overall friends list and tell Facebook to send just those status updates.
Or, since many people are already on Facebook already, just give them better filtering cababilities on their Home page. Both Facebook and Twitter are losing money currently. I don't see both being independently viable. There is too much overlap between their service and not enough ad revenue to go around.
How do you send a message from an iPhone to a Mac user? You can send an e-mail, but that requires more writing (a subject, etc.).
There is no good platform that integrates the Internet with the phone network for short messages. Chat is not the same; you need to open a chat window for each person you want to receive messages from, and you usually converse briefly with them.
A "short message e-mail" system with integration with phone network SMS and broadcast capability could (I emphasize could) make sense for Apple and it's iPhone system. It does seem like a smallish niche, but maybe not.
By the way, I'm not a Twitter user either and it does seem kind of pointless on its own. People apparently get bored with it and drop out at high rates. It does feel like a fad. We'll see.
Well, let's see... you could send an email with just a subject line and no body. There is your short message email system. Also, you can easily send an SMS to an email account and send an email to a phone as an SMS. That would be missing the broadcast capability (similar to what Facebook already has), but maybe something based on RSS? Or you could just base it on email and provide an online service to manage your subscriptions (ie, add yourself to other people's group email distribution lists).
I fail to see how Twitter is nothing more than a very slight twist on services which are already available (email, Facebook, RSS feeds, etc). Why do we need another proprietary system. What we need is someone to better organize/integrate existing services which are based on existing standards.
Hmmm, sounds like a job for Apple. But they certainly don't need to buy Twitter to do it.
The very ethos of the company is reclusive not inclusive. Apple and Twitter doesn't
sound like "Peanut Butter and Jelly" it sounds more like tits on a Bull.