At Web 2.0 Summit a couple weeks ago, John Battelle asked Mark Zuckerberg about a potential acquisition of Twitter. Zuckerberg essentially avoided the question and Caroline McCarthy, suggested such a notion was ludicrous. This morning, Kara Swisher revealed that acquisitions discussions were actually taking place but eventually ended in failure.
The reason, according to Kara, was that Facebook offered a $500 million stock exchange at Microsoft’s $15 billion valuation. Twitter executives and investors suggested that such a valuation was not accurate in the current market environment. Public rumors suggesting a current stock valuation of $4 – $5 billion have supported Twitter’s position.
Twitter continues to grow at an extremely fast rate: 600 percent over the past year. Unfortunately nobody has figured out an effective way to monetize the site. This morning though, Mike Arrington posted about a new service which inserts ads into Twitter. Based on my follower level, I could be earning $237.52 a month. That would definitely help cover part of my rent but probably not worth it given that I’d lose a number of followers for using the service.
An acquisition of Twitter still makes sense for Facebook though given that Twitter is essentially an abstracted version of the Facebook status with the ability to create two-way conversations. Even though the deal has fallen through this time around, Facebook would benefit greatly from buying the company which owns the defacto micro-blogging platform.
Do you think a merger makes sense? How much would you want for Twitter if you owned it?
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Unless one is a reputable blogger, microblogging does not lend itself to flooding FB profiles with dozens of Tweets daily to your news feed (which often angers non-techies in your friend network) that is of course, unless the news feed was build out to include a Twitter tab.
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One detail catches me short: That a Twittereur may be rewarded based on audience size. It's already going on with recognitions such as wallpaper grandts for high performers.
But I would not have interest in building a big audience; I Twitter for the "ambient intimacy," and secondarily [admitted hereby] to promote my blog entries.
I love the idea that I reach an audience with Twitter that has selected me [and mostly vice-versa], and am intrigued by how Tweets can travel through these non-overlapping social circles across the Twittersphere. If I know strangers are trying to build audience by following me in hopes I'll follow back--and to generate revenue with my attention. . .for me, that will change the social nature of the platform.
Geez, am I getting sentimental about "original" Twitter? Kick me.
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Facebook has proven that they are great at generating traffic, and just shy of terrible at generating sustainable cash flows. An acquisition of Twitter by Facebook could be ultimately disastrous, and the idea reminds me of what we just saw with General Motors and Chrysler where they originally wanted government backing to support a merger before the bail out talks began. My point here, both sites have PAPER VALUATIONS, and they are not generating sustainable revenue, so what is the sense of merging two companies that are not making money? Monetize and focus on what you're good at. On the flipside, should an acquisition take place, and Facebook proves that it is ultimately unable to proceed, the Twitter founders and investors loose everything they've worked so hard to achieve and all the windfall prospects are gone.
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Love Thorpus' idea about sucking FB status info into Twitter. Improvement Request #124
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Hmm... don't know if it'd make sense. Would twitter just get swallowed up and become part of Facebook or would it remain separate? I like that it's a separate experience.
I'd dig it though if you could suck in your friends facebook status updates into your twitter newsfeed.
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