Apple + Twitter = A Better Combination Than You Might Think

Let's see: 40% turnover rate. $0 profit. Zero announced plans to even attempt profit. Yep, sounds like a winner to me!

I don't see any synergy.

If Apple needs the development team, they can just hire the people without buying the whole company. Track record doesn't really mean much in the Internet space. Every new web project is different.

How would Twitter make money for Apple? It can't even make money for itself.

Remember the story of eBay buying Skype?

Why this makes no sense (and even less dollars and cents).

The internets (brief) history is full of trendy, failed, Hot Comodities.

In brief:

Assertion 1: Apple is 'soft' in the internet space and should acquire Twitter for the development team.

Reasons this is wrong:
1.) last I checked Apple is a device maker. All of their software is designed to enhance/promote/tie to their hardware. How does tieing up with a free webservice promote Apple hardware?
2.) Even if Apple was in the market what does the purchase get you, talent wise. The founder is already a proven 'hype and dump' developer (blogger.com sold to google). You pay him, he goes on to his next project. The dev team, who's ticket you just punched, has little incentive to stick with you.
3.) While Apple has about 20B in cash and cash equivelents, where is the ROI on twitter? It is a VC loss venture with no profit model and no plans to become profitable.
4.) Twitter isn't a 'technology', it is a web service application. With a greater than 60% churn rate (Danes number is actually the retain number, not the churn), it looks like an electronic hoola hoop to me.

A better 'fit' would have been for Apple to buy Sun Micro and step fully into the business arena. But that ship has sailed.

the whole article is related to iphone and twitter.. but how are they going to make money? i don't think it is just because twitter might increase iphone sales... it is too simple...

What is Twitter? And why don't I care to know?

Strategic investment from one of the big players would make sense. Everything else is just hype.

$700m, you gotta be kidding.

For that amount of money Apple can easily double that by getting the best deals from some suppliers for their products.

The ROI for the twitter is how many years? LOL

Here are a couple of reasons why not:
1. Twitter is not profitable
2. Apple has no expertise in running this type of business.
3. Owning Twitter would put Apple in competition with other applications running on iPhone. Is the iPhone a platform or does Apple plan to compete on software applications?

Just because "they have the money" does not make it a good idea.
What business does Apple think they are in?
Companies do tend to move into adjacent markets during down-cycles, but this one is questionable.

If Apple buys Twitter I will finally have a reason to join Twitter.

Twitter's API is why this is so important. Twitter matters. Like email did back in the 80s

Twitter is the biggest waste of time I've ever encountered. How vain and stupid to think that people want to follow your every mundane activity. I would worry about Apple's stock value if they made such a bad investment. Everything I've read says that Twitter's days are numbered anyway.

While 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, I will say this; there is a logical scenario for Apple to acquire Twitter.

First off, the status update message has emerged as the ultimate social gesture, and we all know how Apple is all about driving consumer engagement.

Quantitatively speaking, 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).

Now, if you married the simple atomicity of the update message with the ability of the messaging client to process “payloads” like pictures, videos, songs, contacts, locative data, documents, URLs, etc., you have a recipe to turn Apple's MobileMe service into its original moniker of “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
--
follow me via twitter @netgarden

This makes no sense.

As you point out, iPhone users are Twittering away. There are tons of Twitter apps. However, you give the already existing lovefest as a reason for the acquisition instead of arguing against it.

If Apple buys Twitter, what do they get out of it, beyond "Twitter, brought to you by Apple"? There's no revenue there. There aren't that many engineers there that could go and work on other projects at Apple instead of staying focused on Twitter. If Apple wants people, Apple can hire them directly.

Apple can't buy Twitter and then make it an Apple exclusive service, as that would defeat the purpose of Twitter.

It may have made sense if Twitter had revenue, or if Twitter was wildly popular, but somehow not easily accessible via Apple products and services...thus Apple could buy Twitter and bring it to their customers.

But the bottom line is that Twitter makes no money, is likely to be eclipsed by features from Facebook and others, can't be made Apple exclusive, doesn't provide any unique technology to Apple, won't bring Apple new customers, and already works well with Apple products.

Here is another suggestion to use those $700 Million - Apple will contribute iMACs in that amount for institutes which need it. It's a great social responsibility and PR and good goal. WIN-WIN Situation.

Google + Ripoffreport.com would be a pretty POWERFUL combo too!!! Perhaps it would be TOO powerful, huh?

Google + Ripoffreport.com would be a pretty POWERFUL combo too!!! Perhaps it would be TOO powerful, huh?

I think we might be losing sight of what Apple is - quite frankly - absolutely brilliant at.

Imagining what others couldn't.

While I agree that the article above is disconnected in plausible reasons (except the app developments) I do believe, and no I don't own shares although I should, is that Apple has demonstrated time and time again that they have they ability see far beyond the obvious.

I won't be surprised in the least if this rumour proves true and Twitter could do much worse than being acquired by a company known for its visionary capabilities.

With the economy likely to get worse than better any time soon, why should Apple spend any money except on things vital to it's well thought out plans? Conservative investment is a good idea and in the interest of stockholders. Maybe half a billion in gold would be smart, or buying a controling interest in IBM. Because Apple has 30 billion in relative liquid assets and even more in buildings, etc., including a bunch of brilliant innovators under contract, and NO DEBT, they could buy several giants of the industry. I don't think they would even spend pocket change on

With the economy likely to get worse than better any time soon, why should Apple spend any money except on things vital to it's well thought out plans? Conservative investment is a good idea and in the interest of stockholders. Maybe half a billion in gold would be smart, or buying a controling interest in IBM. Because Apple has 30 billion in relative liquid assets and even more in buildings, etc., including a bunch of brilliant innovators under contract, and NO DEBT, they could buy several giants of the industry, most of which have large amounts of debt. I don't think they would even spend pocket change on something like twitter.

People, don't look at the service Twitter provides, its the skills of the employees they want. Just like PA Semi. It's all about the skills.

Twitter and the iPhone really DO go well together. Twitter was built for text messaging... but iPhone adds ability to add photos and web links etc. It's well suited to the small screen, and it's meant to be an everywhere app.

Apple gets this synergy for free.

But if I'm Apple, I might want to own Twitter just to keep it out of the hands of Google, MS, etc. To gently guide it/keep it on an iPhone friendly track. Meanwhile, it could really accelerate the use of Twitter in apps by building Twitter support into the iPhone OS APIs.

For a company with Apple's bank account, Twitter is cheap.

Twitter and the iPhone really DO go well together. Twitter was built for text messaging... but iPhone adds ability to add photos and web links etc. It's well suited to the small screen, and it's meant to be an everywhere app.

Apple gets this synergy for free.

But if I'm Apple, I might want to own Twitter just to keep it out of the hands of Google, MS, etc. To gently guide it/keep it on an iPhone friendly track. Meanwhile, it could really accelerate the use of Twitter in apps by building Twitter support into the iPhone OS APIs.

For a company with Apple's bank account, Twitter is cheap.

there's a lot of people who doesn't want Apple to get Twitter.

jon sands

where's my comment? i was saying many people dont want apple to acquire twitter.

jon

The CIA seems the best fit because it's in the business of collecting info on you. The DIA too, the NSA, or any such dept. in the executive branch whose stock in trade is spying, collecting, codifying, and comparing.

Hey, an interesting scenario involving the selling of Twitter is for any of the spy agencies to approach Apple covertly, asking them to buy Twitter but then hand it over with due compensation, of course.

Citizens will then be able to continue to reveal everything about their lives -- their friends, their picadilos, hates, likes, enemies, what makes then tick -- in order to feed them an unlimited amt. personal, perhaps even corporate data of who you are. The CIA would love this turn of events.

Now, these agencies have already gotten the OK from the US Fascist Act to spy on you, and so they have nearly unlimited access to your words, but please continue to write about yourself in detail, revealing all to ease their effort.

You know...it's funny; It seems that the US Fascist Act codifies what is already happening voluntarily.

As much as the rumor mill is pushing this story, it flies in the case of common sense.

http://pacificgatepost.blogspot.com/2009/05/common-sense-apple-will-not-twitter.html

Apple is NOT eBay.

"But the real story is the iPhone"...and it seems that the iPhone platform is moving up the bandwidth scale towards interactive video. While this opens up plenty of new applications/users there is a serious bandwidth access issue that Apple has to overcome. Twitter will not solve that issue - quite opposite, it will create more bandwidth demand. Apple is unlikely to accept user experience degradation and will certainly do something to create a bigger bandwidth pipe access for all iPone/iPod Touch/videocon Macs. Why not just carve out the consumer residential gateway part from struggling Lucent/Alcatel and let them keep the non-consumer infrastructure business. Apples new chip platforms would be integrated into the residential gateways and all networked Apple devices and Apple has gained the DIGITAL HOME in addition to the badly needed higher bandwidth access for new applications. Once that is done Twitter & other hot digital life web applications could make sense.
Rolf Bork, BOD mediaf.com & sensitivetech.com

If Apple did buy it you would probably be limited to a single Apple approved desktop app, RT would be banned because of the DRM and would use a file format incompatible with any other web platform.

However, 'Appler', as it would be know, would look really cool and fan boys would send 'Apples' from their iPhones flaming anyone who dared criticize The Holy One or the $0.99 per 'Apple' charge

And then after we post a tweet, Apple will review it and only then post it on the Twitter site!

Is this journalism (or gossip!)?
This doesn't make any sense and the article doesn't have any valie point (maybe some journalists should go to B-school).I hope and believe Apple is a lot smarter than this and do have any strategic sense. Just bad internet gossip.

No.

Makes sense for self-promotion like a single sponsor of a charity run or sports tournament.

$700 is a cheap ad campaign to a billboard that reaches millions of people by passion and persuasion. A way to introduce it's products to the windows world with user testimonials built in. Cheers, FragerFactor

Apple isn’t going to buy twitter. Knowing Apple, they are meeting with founders of the company to ask if they can use “non public” APIs. Why? So Apple can say they have "exclusive" features for iChat. Take iChat + Tweetie for the desktop + a app for the iphone = you got "exclusive".

http://www.atebits.com/tweetie-mac/

A better use of 700 million that is more in line with their core mission ... reduce price on iMacs and MacBookPros by $500, which would break the backs of HP, Dell and probably Microsoft. A trend I see in the Microsoft world is that their developers are switching to macs and are running Parallels or VMWare. Even people inside Microsoft are doing this.

BannerExperiment.com + Apple would make a good deal?!

maybe apple was spying on twitter gathering information keeping the enemy at bay or maybe they really will buy them. it seems like they have about 25,000 developers on their side now working for them so it doesn't seem likely. they will just come out with iFollow in a few months i think.