This is not correct IMO. The owners of Twitter have a huge Heart-on for Apple and have said so publicly a few times. I also wouldn't mind betting that most Apple employees are already on Twitter right now. They have a great personal relationship.
Fixed the spelling of that for ya. Sentimentalism != product/service synergy between companies. How many other companies have a majority of their employees using Twitter too?
Fixed the spelling of that for ya. Sentimentalism != product/service synergy between companies. How many other companies have a majority of their employees using Twitter too?
Granted on the second point, but "synergy" is usually defined as two companies that are very similar in outlook, goals, etc. and I think my point remains that they are (even though I didn't do the best job of explaining why in any kind of detail).
I should just have said that while I'm not party to the details, my understanding is that they are very similar kinds of companies in terms of their general outlook and philosophy.
of everyone speculating, no one has offered any reason why they think it might be good for Apple to buy Twitter.
The most someone has said is "maybe there's a reason we're not thinking about."
But no one has suggested one compelling reason why it'd be a good fit.
If we knew the reason, Twitter would be bought already. Sure, we haven't given any great reasons, but... that's Apple for you. You never know. They are very creative, they like technologies that are simple on the surface, they probably see huge potential, Twitter is spreading like the a HamDemic, and they have about 30B in the bank.
And btw way I gave what I think is an interesting analogy/reason. It could be (only time will tell) like one single phone company owning SMS, keeping it open, but having control over it, and its direction.
Or........ Steve could have randomly and quickly sat up out of bed from a deep sleep, in a sudden, feverish-rage, and shouted to the nurse "BUY TWITTER!!"
1920–25; perh. orig. n. deriv. of twit, i.e., “one who twits others,” but altered in sense by assoc. with expressive words with tw- ( twaddle, twat, twerp, etc.) and by rhyme with nitwit
I don't use FaceBook, don't like it. I don't say I hate it though, no reason, it's also a waste of energy. Oh, but I do know (of) 200,000,000 people that use it.
I agree with most posters here... I see no compelling business reason for Apple to buy Twitter. The service is free to all platforms and it is hard to monetize any kind of add money.
The money would best spent in incorporating CDMA/EDVO tech capture markets controlled by Verizon, South Korea, Japan, Canada, etc where there is sizable hi income subscribers. Companies retain too much money and then they piss away the money.
Any way, it is time Apple started paying us dividends or buying the stock back. Best is combination of both. They have been in business long enough and it is time to recognize that the shareholder is entitled to a return. I know... the stock goes up, but dividends are important too.
WWDC is coming up very fast. One of the main focuses of the conference will be the iPhone 3.0 OS and one of the main new features is Push Notifications. Now Apple needs to find some impressive, real world demonstrations of why Push Notifications are a good thing so they have been working closely with companies like Twitter to have something to show at WWDC. Somebody notices this and suddenly Apple is going to buy Twitter! EA has been asked on stage to demonstrate games at numerous Apple events as well so the same logic could apply there as well....
What ACTUAL intellectual property does Twitter own that would be worth $700,000,000+?
Considering Apple's user base on OSX / Safari and in the mobile market, something tells me that they could create an integrated service into the OS and/or the browser that would cost about 1/700th of that in R & D costs.
I am skeptical that Apple would make a deal like this, and it?s always silly to comment on (rumored) price tags on pre-revenue companies, but I will say this. The status update message has emerged as the ultimate social gesture.
From a consumer engagement perspective, it is something that Facebookers, MySpacers, tweeters, LinkedIn users do 1-10 times a day (whether they think of the activity as status updating or not).
If you married the simple atomicity of the update message with the ability of that same message to process ?payloads? like pictures, videos, songs, contacts, locative data, documents, URLs, etc., you have a recipe to turn MobileMe into its original moniker ?Exchange for the Rest of Us,? all the while having a core messaging infrastructure that is lightweight and portable enough to run on desktops, iPods, mobile devices and TVs.
Here?s a post that I wrote, which provides a straw man analysis of what such an infrastructure might look like:
"Right Here Now" services: weaving a real-time web around status
Twitter=eyeballs. The business model eventually will include advertising. That some people use this tool in silly ways is irrelevant. If a guy threw a hammer in the air and it landed on his head, would you think hammers are stupid? People will be using Twitter in ways that are not even imagined today. 700 million is chump change if this thing goes into the hundreds of millions of users - which it will. As far as - would less people use it if it included advertising....? Think TV and Google.
Twitter already includes advertising of a sort and it's already intrusive and threatening to block the efficacy of the system. It's part of "going mainstream."
There are many possibilities for advertising on Twitter. There will never be ads in the clients, (except for those that are too cheap to pay $.99 for a client), but Twitter "ads" could presumably be part of the content. For instance I got three new "followers" this morning that turned out to be bots for sex-related service sites. They were already deleted accounts by the time i saw them, but this kind of crap will only increase. Even aside from un-asked for SPAM, if you follow the wrong person on Twitter, all you get is a spew of boring micro-links to crap that they are pushing or "advertising" so it's often the same thing.
Curiously, while a sane person would probably stop following someone like that, a lot of people think this is pretty cool, and lots of people already follow companies (or blogs or other group entities), on Twitter and enjoy it immensely.
I'm not sure if they are in on it yet, but imagine for a moment that you could follow "Coca-Cola" on Twitter. Milions of people would, and it's like a direct line from Coke HQ into your pocket. Hell, they can even *make* you look at it by ringing a bell every time they send an ad to you.
Of course this will be sold to you as "getting important updates" on developments in the cola world, not ads.
Comments
This is not correct IMO. The owners of Twitter have a huge Heart-on for Apple and have said so publicly a few times. I also wouldn't mind betting that most Apple employees are already on Twitter right now. They have a great personal relationship.
Fixed the spelling of that for ya. Sentimentalism != product/service synergy between companies. How many other companies have a majority of their employees using Twitter too?
I just tweeted that image, LOL.
Sounds...almost perverted, somehow.
Well, if someone saw the image - with no text attached - they might think you have just combined the words "twist" and "nipple".
The most someone has said is "maybe there's a reason we're not thinking about."
But no one has suggested one compelling reason why it'd be a good fit.
Boy: Oh, tons. You wanna take a look at my...twipple?
Girl: *pulls out pepper spray*
Fixed the spelling of that for ya. Sentimentalism != product/service synergy between companies. How many other companies have a majority of their employees using Twitter too?
Granted on the second point, but "synergy" is usually defined as two companies that are very similar in outlook, goals, etc. and I think my point remains that they are (even though I didn't do the best job of explaining why in any kind of detail).
I should just have said that while I'm not party to the details, my understanding is that they are very similar kinds of companies in terms of their general outlook and philosophy.
of everyone speculating, no one has offered any reason why they think it might be good for Apple to buy Twitter.
The most someone has said is "maybe there's a reason we're not thinking about."
But no one has suggested one compelling reason why it'd be a good fit.
If we knew the reason, Twitter would be bought already. Sure, we haven't given any great reasons, but... that's Apple for you. You never know. They are very creative, they like technologies that are simple on the surface, they probably see huge potential, Twitter is spreading like the a HamDemic, and they have about 30B in the bank.
And btw way I gave what I think is an interesting analogy/reason. It could be (only time will tell) like one single phone company owning SMS, keeping it open, but having control over it, and its direction.
Or........ Steve could have randomly and quickly sat up out of bed from a deep sleep, in a sudden, feverish-rage, and shouted to the nurse "BUY TWITTER!!"
Apple can't do any kind of integration of Twitter like functionality without buying Twitter.
I don't understand what you are saying.
I have a Twitter App on my iPhone home screen. And another on my desktop.
I am not sure how Apple could make the iPhone or Mac any *more* Twitter-filled if it bought the company and enslaved its entire workforce.
C.
YES!! Finally someone on my level. I hate the whole Facebook thing myself.....
Wow, it's great to see that I am not the only one......
twit
–noun Informal.
an insignificant or bothersome person.
Origin:
1920–25; perh. orig. n. deriv. of twit, i.e., “one who twits others,” but altered in sense by assoc. with expressive words with tw- ( twaddle, twat, twerp, etc.) and by rhyme with nitwit
Experts speculate they plan to develop special hardware along with an iPhone app that dispenses ice cream on demand.
Just be sure to turn off the app before putting the iPhone in your pocket.
Breaking News: Apple rumored to be in talks to acquire Dairy Queen.
You just made that up.
The money would best spent in incorporating CDMA/EDVO tech capture markets controlled by Verizon, South Korea, Japan, Canada, etc where there is sizable hi income subscribers. Companies retain too much money and then they piss away the money.
Any way, it is time Apple started paying us dividends or buying the stock back. Best is combination of both. They have been in business long enough and it is time to recognize that the shareholder is entitled to a return. I know... the stock goes up, but dividends are important too.
WWDC is coming up very fast. One of the main focuses of the conference will be the iPhone 3.0 OS and one of the main new features is Push Notifications. Now Apple needs to find some impressive, real world demonstrations of why Push Notifications are a good thing so they have been working closely with companies like Twitter to have something to show at WWDC. Somebody notices this and suddenly Apple is going to buy Twitter! EA has been asked on stage to demonstrate games at numerous Apple events as well so the same logic could apply there as well....
Considering Apple's user base on OSX / Safari and in the mobile market, something tells me that they could create an integrated service into the OS and/or the browser that would cost about 1/700th of that in R & D costs.
From a consumer engagement perspective, it is something that Facebookers, MySpacers, tweeters, LinkedIn users do 1-10 times a day (whether they think of the activity as status updating or not).
If you married the simple atomicity of the update message with the ability of that same message to process ?payloads? like pictures, videos, songs, contacts, locative data, documents, URLs, etc., you have a recipe to turn MobileMe into its original moniker ?Exchange for the Rest of Us,? all the while having a core messaging infrastructure that is lightweight and portable enough to run on desktops, iPods, mobile devices and TVs.
Here?s a post that I wrote, which provides a straw man analysis of what such an infrastructure might look like:
"Right Here Now" services: weaving a real-time web around status
http://bit.ly/i40h
Check it out if interested.
Cheers,
Mark
Twitter=eyeballs. The business model eventually will include advertising. That some people use this tool in silly ways is irrelevant. If a guy threw a hammer in the air and it landed on his head, would you think hammers are stupid? People will be using Twitter in ways that are not even imagined today. 700 million is chump change if this thing goes into the hundreds of millions of users - which it will. As far as - would less people use it if it included advertising....? Think TV and Google.
Twitter already includes advertising of a sort and it's already intrusive and threatening to block the efficacy of the system. It's part of "going mainstream."
There are many possibilities for advertising on Twitter. There will never be ads in the clients, (except for those that are too cheap to pay $.99 for a client), but Twitter "ads" could presumably be part of the content. For instance I got three new "followers" this morning that turned out to be bots for sex-related service sites. They were already deleted accounts by the time i saw them, but this kind of crap will only increase. Even aside from un-asked for SPAM, if you follow the wrong person on Twitter, all you get is a spew of boring micro-links to crap that they are pushing or "advertising" so it's often the same thing.
Curiously, while a sane person would probably stop following someone like that, a lot of people think this is pretty cool, and lots of people already follow companies (or blogs or other group entities), on Twitter and enjoy it immensely.
I'm not sure if they are in on it yet, but imagine for a moment that you could follow "Coca-Cola" on Twitter. Milions of people would, and it's like a direct line from Coke HQ into your pocket. Hell, they can even *make* you look at it by ringing a bell every time they send an ad to you.
Of course this will be sold to you as "getting important updates" on developments in the cola world, not ads.