“The Mac maker is on the list of firms who could/should acquire the social media empire. But Google is a much more likely candidate,” Louis Bedigian writes for Forbes.
“Whenever a major acquisition occurs, the world scrambles to figure out which companies will be acquired next, how much they will sell for, and who will buy them,” Bedigian writes. “If a questionable (and currently profitless) firm like Instagram can earn $1 billion just for having 30 million users, surely Twitter — a growing social media empire with a few hundred million users — could earn several times that amount.”
Bedigian writes, “If Twitter is to become a stellar source for analytics in the future (it already is for one thriving startup), Google will inevitably see the value in acquiring the firm and do everything it can to buy it as soon as possible… Unlike Apple, which is mostly a manufacturer of hardware, and unlike Microsoft, which focuses on software, Google doesn’t sell many things directly to consumers. Rather, Google makes the majority of its money from analytics. That is yet another reason why Google will fight to obtain Twitter. This, of course, assumes that Twitter wants to be acquired.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Brawndo Drinker” for the heads up.]
If gaggle buys T, something better will come along.
That will doom Twitter. I certainly won’t use it any more if Google takes it over, just like I’m not using Instagram any more now that FB bought them.
The whole point if these companies is that they are *not* Facebook or Google, who will surely mess them up (Google+ integration into Twitter, ugh).
+1
What’s the point of discounting Twitter at this point? Don’t you show any brand loyalty? What have you twittered, regarding this fairy-tale notion that Twitter cannot stand alone as an independent metric?
You know Z, the problem with your strategy is, by the time you figure out which side you’re on, you will be the last one to the party.
An email address is the price of admission, for the moment, but all that is about to change when the government and Big Brother decide there will no longer be anonymity. The practice of Anonymous Proxies will be banned from the world wide web.
You won’t have much choice in another ten-years, Google will own pretty much everything, just as AT&T forced every American, in the Eighties, to come into their phone store, if you wanted telephone service in your home, paid their prices, their fees and rates, because there was no other phone company!
It will happen again because the 20th century rules don’t apply bandwidth.
The point is, STOP bashing companies for the failures of leadership. There are a lot of fine people who work at Twitter to make it the effective tool that it is, and for you to suggest that we abandon Twitter just because they get bought up by a company run by ruthless and ethically-challeged asshats, doesn’t now somehow make the folks at Twitter, or their product any less functional.
As I said, if Google buys Twitter, then clearly the people running Google believe that spontaneous communication and ad-hoc networks of gossipmongers have plateaued, and the tweets will become one more metric Google will use to get their ads in front of eyes.
In any case, consolidation is innevitable. So, sooner or later you’ll capitulate and you join under protest and sooth your ego with the notion that your presence livens up the place.
Google is a half baked bunch of idiots that take handfuls of ideas and throw them to a wall waiting to see what sticks. They do nothing really well, Mediocre will work for a short time, but is a constant for failure.
By the numbers, google has shown to be a glass half full company, if it would ever take control of Twitter we would see the demise of that very quickly.
Many users have turned away from google, everything it stands for including the lies and deciet have shown it cant be trusted with our user information (read the google agreement on what thay can do with a imdividuals information) Googles business model of take first deal with it later attitude is destroying them as we speak.
Watch and see as the numbers keep falling, With the Oracle trial comming up and new information of the shady practices google has employed, has started an implosion from the inards that with consume them fully, and any company they touch will go down with the ship as they say.
Uh, the Oracle/Google trial is underway. It’s been in the news for a couple of days now.
I read your comment and I gotta say I pretty much agree with everything you said. All I’m saying is Google is Bill Murray in What About Bob. He’s not going away.
Also, stick around long enough and many of the business descions coming out of Cupertino in the next few years will have you questioning Apple’s processes and practices. It’s inevitable, Apple will fall from grace once again, and many, like yourselves will leave again. History repeats.
See ya’ when you get back… If I’m still living.
Let Google eat it up and have a diarrhea.
Let Google piss away their Money…..
I’ll be another user abandoning my Twitter account.
Twitter is useless to me and may have had use a long time ago but is now just a waste of time.
Useless to you? Not really, you’re still talking about it. In fact, you probably spend more time now talking about it than using it.
I can’t think of a more powerful communication device that can bring ten-million people to a consensus in a matter of seconds and the price of admission is an email address.
You didn’t spend enough time with it when it first came out and now the platform has evolved beyond anything you can imagine.
Twitter has recieved continuous injections of human DNA and has taken on the lifestyle of its constituency; activism! Twitter is the ideal platform to cast up or down votes held in the public arena. Whether it’s voting on ta ta’s or health care Twitter has an opinion, and I value that opinion.
Why is it so important to you., can’t stand the fact that users are respectfully saying what they will do if Google puts its filthy hands on Twitter..
No, it’s you G4, looks like you have a problem with free individual’s speaking there own minds, it’s not anyone else but yourself waisting time tring to throw your way of control thinking and obsessive compulsive disorder to the masses.
You are so blinded by your love for Google that you can’t think of anyone moving away from its grasp, and then throw insults to back your way of thinking.
Understand google is not loved by everyone, and more and more people are seeing them for what they really are.
Enjoy your bubble.
Jeeze slow down… I have a couple of gmail accounts and I use google search extensively, but your characterization of my motives is kind of creepy.
I don’t have a modicum of loyalty to google, never did after they took the company public.
You totally misread my premise in today’s topic. I’m not advocating allegience to Google, I’m an interested bystander watching a war over mindshare in which google is a player among many and your impression is that I’m cheering for google, when in fact, I’m just cheering for more blood.
I don’t recognize you and I’ve been here for ten-years. So fuck off.
I’m sorry but I have to come back to you.
I didn’t mention google at all in my comment. In fact, much of what I wrote was about Twitter and yet yet you called me out over my love for google? WTF wally?
No it’s you G4… Blah blah blah. What follows sounds like something someone once said to you and it stuck and you’ve been passing it off as your own.
At least I’m original and made a contribution to the thread. You haven’t said one thing about the article’s content and instead you decide to take a pot shot at me.
I’m on you K.C. I am going to hound you.
But then what would happen to the iOS integration with Twitter, they can’t just introduce a feature, then just scrap it. but maybe they can, cause they’re apple.
Great point – Apple integrated Tweeter to iOS but not any other social network – so perhaps there is a good reason Apple could possibly be interested in buying Twitter.
The simpler reason is, Apple liked twitter so much, they decided to give them a place in iOS. End of story.
Just because you can do a thing, doesn’t mean you should. The fact is, this author is playing Google and Apple off each other to hasten people into action and at the very least get some hits.
I would like to see the folls at Twitter declare the platform ad-agnostic and commercial free.
“Unlike Apple, which is mostly a manufacturer of hardware”
Ughhhhhh – what the heck????
Of all the roles which Apple partakes; manufacturing would describe them the least.
Software – with apps and a os being the root of its existence.
Hardware – design and engineering innovations equaling its software uniqueness.
Chips and Manufacturing processes are dictated by Apple to gain the desired product that compliments software and hardware – they do not manufacture themselves. Apple has an amazing logistics system for supply and researching new technologies on many particulars dealign with their products… but no NOT a manufacturing company.
Wow, you’re so myopic about this “manufacturing” detail.
First, without it, what’s the point? Secondly, you do realize Steve Jobs practically bankrupted NeXT, because of his over-the-top manufacturing standards. My god, did you even read Isaacson’s book?
Manufacturing is the reason Apple didn’t sell 15-million iPads last quarter! When you say “they do not manufacture themselves” I have to laugh at your ignorance. Apple is about as close to a manufacturer as any company I know. The machines and the factories, the people all belong to Apple, Inc. the top leadership positions are filled with Apple employees.
After the most recent non-scandal over Apple’s manufacturing plants and the way Apple went on the defensive to proclaim there is no aspect to manufacturing Apple doesn’t have its mitts on.
Amazing how little you understand Apple. Why do you think Apple software costs $9.99 for Pages, Keynote, etc.? Why Lion upgrade is $29,99?
Because Apple is a HARDWARE company. The software simply supports the hardware. Yes, the software is also amazing (iOS as an example), but none of Apple’s software means anything without great hardware.
Apple designs the A series of chips, used to participate heavily on PowerPC chip design, and has shared much technology with Intel over chip design. Not to mention FireWire, Thunderbolt, first mass implementation of USB and WiFi, etc. etc.
Excellent point that is often overlooked about Apple; hardware first.
One more point: You may as well say that GM, Ford, etc. don’t “manufacture” cars because what they basically do is assemble parts made by their suppliers to their specifications.
I thought that you caught too much flak for your post, WaterLily. I thought the same thing when I read the excerpt. Apple designs products in a hardware/software/user experience ecosystem. Saying that Apple is “mostly” a manufacturer of hardware, or, as your critics claim, that the “software simply supports the hardware,” is not an accurate representation of the company or its culture, in my opinion.
Yeah well mel, the same could be said about any one of the legs of a stool. I simply noted that waterlily and many like them have very short histories with Apple products and when they start making proclamations about who Apple is, well, there are too many tells…
I am happy to see waterlily’s defensive response, kneejerk, as it may be, the young padwan has great potential.
So, Tweeter might not be what Apple wants if you look at Apple as a manufacturing company – but as a technology company that integrates software to its hardware – tweeter could be appealing to Apple (in ways we don’t realize yet) but for the right price. Advertising with Tweeter could be where that happens… Still – I do agreed Apple will not buy.
“Tweeter” – lol
Great! Buy this crap for 45 bi and die… then Apple (iOS-share) boycott Twitter.
WORST PRODUCT NAMES
1) Yahoo
2) Twitter
3) Zune
4) Google
BEST NAMES THAT FAILED
1) Excite
2) Prodigy
SHINIEST HEAD
1) Steve EmBallmer
Nuff said!
“excite” is a good product name?
Google and fb will not buy twitter. Twitter is a group of cowboys. In a good sense of the word. Apple might be interesting to them under the right extremely liberal consitions, But never google fb (spit sound).
Craigslist needs to buy twitter. Anything less is a felony!
Please, no.
This is why we need Twitter to find a sustainable way of making money. Otherwise, it’ll eventually be assimilated into either Google or Facebook. Just like Instagram (RIP).
4 years ago could we imagine that Google and Facebook would become the graveyards of successful “startups”.
I use quotes because Twitter is not a startup as its been around ages, kind of like skype. Which stangly is/was also blue and cloudish.