Apple Looking to Acquire Twitter?

[MacRumors]

http://www.macrumors.com/images/macrumorsthreadlogo.gif (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/05/05/apple-looking-to-acqure-twitter/)

TechCrunch (http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/05/twitter-mania-google-got-shut-down-apple-rumors-heat-up/) reports that they've heard that Apple may be in late stage negotiations to buy Twitter.com (http://twitter.com) for $700 million. Of course, when they checked with their other sources, they were told they knew nothing of the sort... making this rumor seem very questionable.

Twitter is a social messaging platform that allows users to broadcast short messages to "followers". The web app has seen a recent explosion in growth with massive publicity surrounding celebrity usage. Ashton Kucher (http://twitter.com/aplusk) and Oprah (http://twitter.com/Oprah) are some of the biggest celebrities to recently start participating on Twitter.

Perhaps the biggest reason to doubt this rumor is that there seems to be no clear synergy between Apple and Twitter. Twitter continues to run on venture capital funding and has yet to find a revenue stream.

Article Link: Apple Looking to Acquire Twitter? (http://www.macrumors.com/2009/05/05/apple-looking-to-acqure-twitter/)

[johnnyjibbs]

This seems even less likely than Apple acquiring EA. What is Apple going to do with Twitter? How are they going to make any money from it? Moreover, with its very public stream and APIs, how is it going to help sell Macs or iPhones?

[icloud]

I'd be pretty okay with Apple acquiring twitter. All of my friend using twitter seem to be mac users.

I'm on twitter as: @Sound_wav (twitter.com/Sound_wav)

[iPhoneNYC]

What I don't like about Twitter is it's falseness. A-Rod doesn't twitter when he's going to shoot steroids, etc. It's highly controlled PR. 140 characters of it. False glossed-over news will where thin after the fad of it wears off. From my perspective, it would be like Time acquiring AOL. It's not a good move.

[foobarbaz]

That's about 1$ per APPL share. What a waste of money.

[mobius42]

I think Jim Cramer is trying to manipulate Apple's stock price again. Where do these crazy rumours come from!?:confused:

[Virtuo]

This is interesting news. I initially heard this from: http://valleywag.gawker.com/5240350/could-apple-buy-twitter . Again just interesting :). Not entirely sure if I'd like it to be true.

[kenzbud]

Wirelessly posted (Apple iPhone 3G 16GB White: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5H11 Safari/525.20)

Two take over rumors in a row? Something fishy is going on here : /

[T'hain Esh Kelch]

This has to be one of the most stupid Apple rumors I've ever heard...

[Makosuke]

I disagree--EA is one of the stupidest takeover rumors I've heard. Twitter at least has the "small, hip" thing Apple likes very much. I don't exactly see how Apple would benefit from buying the company, as the iPhone is already well-positioned as a Twitter client and it's by nature a free and platform-agnostic service, but it makes more sense than an immense broad-spectrum game developer.

Still, I don't see it happening unless the board in place of Steve is getting buzzword-happy on the acquisitions. More likely a stock-manipulation scheme, I'd say.

[Linkmobile]

Apple should buy Macromors :D

[melchior]

how and why? what resources does twitter have that apple wants? god forbid it should be somehow tied into the useless monstrosity that is mobileme. maybe however, they want jack dorsey to fix mobileme? or at least make it useful. buying him out for $700million is one way to do that...

but really, this, just like the ea business is bunk because it has nothing to do with apple. twitter already acknowledges it has no revenue stream and ea is not about to start producing all it's titles natively in opengl.

[t0mat0]

Wirelessly posted (Apple iPhone 3G 16GB White: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5H11 Safari/525.20)

Two take over rumors in a row? Something fishy is going on here : /

Agreed - I think the article recently talking about the strong quiet increase in stock price of AAPL to a level above a price it was at before hedgers got bearish on Apple has some bearing on the situation.

TheStreet's David Tong (http://www.thestreet.com/story/10495815/3/fast-money-recap-does-the-rally-have-legs.html) relays that FastMoney's Guy Adami claims that there is "chatter" that Apple is eyeing an Electronic Arts takeover.

From Techcrunch on the Twitter fritter theory
“Apple is in late stage negotiations to buy Twitter and is hoping to announce it at WWDC in June,” said a normally reliable source this evening, adding that the purchase price would be $700 million in cash. The trouble is we’ve checked with other sources who claim to know nothing about any Apple negotiations. If these discussions are happening, Twitter is keeping them very quiet indeed. We would have passed on reporting this rumor at all, but other press is now picking it up.

Twitter is strongly signaling that it doesn’t want to sell at any price right now.

Officially silly May WWDC run up season, now we've got close enough and the stocks high enough.

Jim Cramer admitted as much, so i'd imagine there are others
http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/09/03/13/jon_stewart_exposes_apple_stock_manipulation.html

And The Street isn't the best
http://www.roughlydrafted.com/2007/08/05/more-on-scott-moritz-and-the-jim-cramer-street-misinformation-engine/


Fomenting the market against Apple, however, "is very easy, because the people who write about Apple want that story. And you can claim that it is credible because you spoke to someone at Apple, because Apple isn’t in [a position to comment on unannounced products]. It is an ideal short."

http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/company-news-story.aspx?storyid=20090422194811opm33164&title=fast-money-apple-leads-tech-parade

Guy Adami said Apple shares have enjoyed a great run, up 47 percent for the year, but he said the prudent step here would be to take profits. "I can't go piling on the back of these earnings hoping they've just sand bagged the next quarter," he said.

[commander.data]

It makes more sense for Apple to take over one of those internet video sites like Hulu than Twitter. Twitter may be popular, but I'm not sure how much value it adds to Apple's product line.

[iOrlando]

this should be on page 10 not page 2.

[twoodcc]

now i wish this would happen, but i doubt it will. but i would like to see more twitter stuff in ilife and the sort

[Willis]

unlikely... EA was fishing with no bait... this is fishing without a pole

[Randman]

I disagree--EA is one of the stupidest takeover rumors I've heard.

EA means more iPhone games which means more demand for iPhones. EA makes all kind of sense. Twitter? Not sure how Apple could leverage it to its advantage.

[rdowns]

Ridiculous rumor. Simply created to get page views.

[koobcamuk]

Apple won't buy Twitter.

If they do, they will censor the **** out of it and then people won't use it anymore. For ****s sake.

EA means more iPhone games which means more demand for iPhones. EA makes all kind of sense. Twitter? Not sure how Apple could leverage it to its advantage.

EA makes no sense at all. Think about it. Think.


EDIT: Breaking news: Apple to buy Microsoft.

[Randman]

EA makes no sense at all. Think about it. Think.


EDIT: Breaking news: Apple to buy Microsoft.

I think you should think about it. And comparing EA to M$ is just daft.

[lazyrighteye]

No. Way.
Nope.
Huh uh.
Not happening.

[Tilpots]

Wirelessly posted (Apple iPhone 3G 16GB White: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5H11 Safari/525.20)

Two take over rumors in a row? Something fishy is going on here : /

Whether it's the run up to WWDC or not, two take over rumors in this small amount of time might mean something. Neither makes much sense, but it seems some chatter about Apple is occuring right now. Guess we'll just have to wait and see what it is. I personally still hope it's TiVo, but that's a whole 'nother rumor from years ago...

[Michael73]

Stop and think about this...

If there is one thing that Apple does better than make hardware and software, it's preserve their operating margins. They didn't get their current cash position by not paying as much attention to profit as their design and usability. With that said, social media platforms are nice but no one has yet cracked the nut on how to turn social discussion into a revenue stream. Apple is not going to buy or invest in a business unless there is a solid business case behind.

[MikeTheC]

Ya know, at this rate, I think I'm going to start up a business designing humorous t-shirts using all open-source software and sell it to Apple. ;)

[mrgreen4242]

Well, just sort of brainstorming here, but I could see some sort of hook into an platform of mobile phones for Twitter. Building it into an OS level API so all apps could access it and receive push notifications through the service could have some potential for integrating app usage and social networking. Auto tweet for high scores in games, status updates for what you're listening too or watching, location awareness, etc. And in reverse, apps seeing a tweet in your friends streams for high scores to notify you of them, or let you know someone else has the song song(s) on their top played list at the same time, or whatever.

I could see something cool in Apple using a Twitter-like social networking service, especially if they actually release a lower priced iPhone nano on a few networks. Don't see why they'd need to buy Twitter to do it, other than "eliminating the competition".

[notjustjay]

EA makes no sense at all. Think about it. Think.



Eh?

EA makes sense. Apple would position themselves better in the gaming market if they could work directly with the software guys making some of the more popular games out there. Either to make the games work best with the hardware Apple's selling, or make better design decisions about the hardware to better serve the software.

I still think a takeover rumor is far-fetched, but at least it has some merit to it. But Apple buying Twitter? What on earth for? That's like saying McDonald's and Reebok are going to merge.

[rdowns]

That's like saying McDonald's and Reebok are going to merge.


There is certainly synergy there. I needs my Reeboks ro run to the bathroom after eating that crap.

I see no good business reason for Apple to acquire Twitter unless Jobs really is not coming back. He will just Tweet all his orders to the troops.

[psingh01]

It's more likely Apple buys Microsoft than Twitter :D Not gonna happen!

[wizard]

Really I think this could be significant for Apple at a more reasonable price. Say one tenth the mentioned price.

The idea is that twitter would be integrated right into Mobile Me. No one has considered just how well this might work out. It would be a draw for Mobile Me and solve the no income issue for twitter.

[Shunnabunich]

Like I said on AI, if they do this, they may as well buy up TinyURL, Meebo and maybe 4chan for good measure. :rolleyes:

That said...

http://img381.imageshack.us/img381/7965/twipple.png
Eh? Eh?

...Yeah, it sounds vaguely disturbing to me too.

[youngcapitalist]

The Twitter acquisition might actually make some synergistic sense. If Apple is actually going to make video a key component of the next iPhone and framing the iPhone as a more social platform they could prob very easily incorporate video capability on the go into Twitter. You could essentially make Twitter into a much more social, usable youtube.

[avionicsman]

Like I said on AI, if they do this, they may as well buy up TinyURL, Meebo and maybe 4chan for good measure. :rolleyes:

That said...

http://img381.imageshack.us/img381/7965/twipple.png
Eh? Eh?

...Yeah, it sounds vaguely disturbing to me too.

I can't see this happening with twitter although I love the twipple phrase Shunna. I will post on twitter. EA makes great sense, my friend works in the mobile dept of EA and they are working on many apps for the iphone and BB.

[ajbrehm]

This seems even less likely than Apple acquiring EA. What is Apple going to do with Twitter? How are they going to make any money from it? Moreover, with its very public stream and APIs, how is it going to help sell Macs or iPhones?

My sentiments exactly.

I keep reading about established companies buying new Web things for large amounts of money. Every time I wonder what the point of it is.

Apple buying EA I can understand. It would allow Apple to target Mac and iPhone with more games and dictate terms to Nintendo, Microsoft, and Sony.

But Twitter? Is this for coolness only?

[bedifferent]

I wish I had owned Google, Me.com, Yahoo, Twiter, etc. years ago. What did Apple pay to own Me.com? 500 mill? Insanity. What's the next craze going to be?

[kimble3]

I think you're on to something here. Let's face it, there is no way that Apple is going to buy Twitter. It's just not going to happen.

On the other hand, WWDC is coming up and the main focus of the conference is going to be the iPhone 3.0 OS with push notifications. Now it makes perfect sense that Apple is working closely with companies that can show off the capabilities of push notifications so that they have something cool to demo at WWDC. I'm sure that this is as far as Apples interest in Twitter goes.

Well, just sort of brainstorming here, but I could see some sort of hook into an platform of mobile phones for Twitter. Building it into an OS level API so all apps could access it and receive push notifications through the service could have some potential for integrating app usage and social networking. Auto tweet for high scores in games, status updates for what you're listening too or watching, location awareness, etc. And in reverse, apps seeing a tweet in your friends streams for high scores to notify you of them, or let you know someone else has the song song(s) on their top played list at the same time, or whatever.

I could see something cool in Apple using a Twitter-like social networking service, especially if they actually release a lower priced iPhone nano on a few networks. Don't see why they'd need to buy Twitter to do it, other than "eliminating the competition".

[yellow]

Twitter continues to run on venture capital funding and has yet to find a revenue stream.

This is the crux of it.

Why would a profitable company (Apple) spend money to acquire a company that has no revenue stream, no possibility of revenue stream, and apparently looses 70% of it's newly signed up members within a month?

Sounds more like a Microsoftian move to me. ;)

[pmjoe]

The only reason to buy Twitter would be name/brand/fad recognition and a user base. There is no useful technology behind the curtain.

[alphaod]

Considering these are the same people who sold Blogger to Google, they know if they can wait it out long enough, they can sell it for even more.

[kironin]

How stupid can rumors get ? very stupid I guess

Apple paying $700 million for a company not relevant to their businesses that not only makes no money, but has NO revenue stream at all and no conceivable way to make a revenue stream without probably killing the business? Twitter is fun but the VC backing it have got to be deluded idiots. When they wake up from the delusion, Twitter will change drastically or just cease to exist.

and The Street is just absolute garbage, a short seller disinformation engine that is a total waste of electrons.

[bonzai90210]

I can't believe this is true. Twitter is a flash in the pan and has no value to Apple. It's even less valuable than a message board. The number of "SEO and social media experts," network marketing gurus, and general trolls that flood twitter with irrelevant nonsense will doom it to the ash heap of cute, irrelevant technologies.

[yellow]

Why pay, when they can just steal the idea?

<cough><widgets><konfabulator><cough>

[thejadedmonkey]

...why? Chip fab companies and the like, I can see.

Twitter?!

[KingYaba]

What a waste of money. Buy Wikipedia instead. :)

[mrgreen4242]

I think you're on to something here. Let's face it, there is no way that Apple is going to buy Twitter. It's just not going to happen.

On the other hand, WWDC is coming up and the main focus of the conference is going to be the iPhone 3.0 OS with push notifications. Now it makes perfect sense that Apple is working closely with companies that can show off the capabilities of push notifications so that they have something cool to demo at WWDC. I'm sure that this is as far as Apples interest in Twitter goes.

Ya, the more I think about it the more interesting it actually becomes. The iPhone is the first dip in the water for Apple and I'll bet you that we will (eventually) see other phones from Apple (the elusive iPhone nano or lite or whatever) and WAN enabled devices in the coming years.

Look what Amazon is doing with the Kindle (free 3G service to access the Amazon store and other selected sites). What if Apple puts a 3G chip in all iPods (except the shuffle, I suppose) in the next year or two and lets you buy from the iTMS (with a little upcharge to cover the data services payment to the wireless provider - variable pricing anyone)?

But SMS is, in reality free to the carrier - it's carried on the same bandwidth as the communications that keep the phone on the network. So part of the deal could be free SMS based "tweets" that turn your iPod (not just iPhone) into a little social networking portal... I dunno, there's some sense to the idea of a partnership with Twitter at least.

[Saladinos]

Would be good for both parties. Apple needs experience in web services, and Twitter is such a massive service it would put Apple second only to Google in terms of web service expertise.

[Eminemdrdre00]

Good then maybe they can integrate a character count into their SMS app!

[rwilliams]

What exactly would Apple do with Twitter? Does it have any real world value other than a cute little app for bored people?

[Makosuke]

EA means more iPhone games which means more demand for iPhones. EA makes all kind of sense. Twitter? Not sure how Apple could leverage it to its advantage.No, a game company makes sense. EA is a MASSIVE game company that not only would cost several billion dollars, but comes with the burden of already making products for basically every platform in existence, many of which are of the "churned out" variety (eg Madden '[Date] and movie tie-ins).

For buying EA to be worth it Apple would need to have some hope of return on investment. This means either continuing development for EVERYTHING, but putting a few titles iPhone/Mac only, or completely killing their Xbox, PS3, Windows, DS, and PSP products and somehow expecting that the draw to the iPhone will be big enough to make that a wise move.

Hell, even MICROSOFT didn't buy EA when looking to boost their XBox exclusives; they grabbed Bungie and Rare, smaller, drastically cheaper companies with a manageable product portfolio that could easily be made platform-exclusive.

Point being that Apple buying a game company isn't at all unrealistic--I'd almost expect it at some point. But buying a HUGE game company with a vast array of titles would be questionable to put it mildly.

[ki2594]

just a thought!

Maybe they could take Twitter and turn it into a BBM (Blackberry Messenger) type service for the iPhone/iPod touch, and instead of a pin, u just type in there twitter name?

[michael.lauden]

with all the statistics saying that most twitter users top after 30 days... i dont see why Apple would want them.. they haven't really found their niche or a real revenue stream.

[Spades]

god forbid it should be somehow tied into the useless monstrosity that is mobileme

Suddenly I'm not so skeptical. Apple is great at doing mediocre web services that a vast majority of people have no use nor imaginable desire for. Twitter would fit right in.

Twitter and SMS both need to die. Their arbitrary and absurdly short length limits are causing serious injury to the English language.

[Stridder44]

god forbid it should be somehow tied into the useless monstrosity that is mobileme.

At least then we'll have bundled together two useless entities.


/awaits the day people realize Twitter is retarded

[mrgreen4242]

Twitter and SMS both need to die. Their arbitrary and absurdly short length limits are causing serious injury to the English language.

Clearly you don't understand how SMS works. The data is carried in the excess bandwidth found in the signaling space used to track which phones are on what part of the network. From a technical aspect it is basically free. It uses up no bandwidth that would otherwise be free, it uses up practically 0 resources, it's actually rather brilliant.

What needs to die is the pricing structure the phone carriers have built up around SMS. It should simply be included with every account for no cost.

[Spades]

A single SMS message is limited to 160 characters, isn't it?

[ecaballerojr]

how and why? what resources does twitter have that apple wants? god forbid it should be somehow tied into the useless monstrosity that is mobileme. maybe however, they want jack dorsey to fix mobileme? or at least make it useful. buying him out for $700million is one way to do that...

but really, this, just like the ea business is bunk because it has nothing to do with apple. twitter already acknowledges it has no revenue stream and ea is not about to start producing all it's titles natively in opengl.


Just remember, if you're like me, a loyal fan and customer to Apple, then you'd know that everywhere Apple lays it hands on, something amazing happens. Why waste time bashing this? Instead, try to imagine the possibilities of what Apple might do with these two companies. If you can't think of anything, then wait it out. Buying EA would be interesting, buying Twitter just made me curious.

Me, I'm excited to see what Apple might come up with in the following months.

MobileMe is useless to he who doesn't know how to use it.

[TuffLuffJimmy]

Awesome! Now Twitter will be as reliable as MobileMe. No more down time. Lol.

[Willis]

Well, just sort of brainstorming here, but I could see some sort of hook into an platform of mobile phones for Twitter. Building it into an OS level API so all apps could access it and receive push notifications through the service could have some potential for integrating app usage and social networking. Auto tweet for high scores in games, status updates for what you're listening too or watching, location awareness, etc. And in reverse, apps seeing a tweet in your friends streams for high scores to notify you of them, or let you know someone else has the song song(s) on their top played list at the same time, or whatever.
.

That would get annoying with all the notifications... I think most people would turn it off...

A single SMS message is limited to 160 characters, isn't it?

I've always wondered this and never actually found out

[chgojcs]

Let's face it, Apple has no reason to buy Twitter, as Twitter is absolutely useless.
Maybe it's my age, but I cannot understand why people find the need to share every last little trifling thought on their minds. Since when have we become a society totally bent self-validation?
At the end of the day, there are things in life that don't need to be shared.

"I'm having a great dinner at Chili's!" Who cares?

"I thinking this or that!" Again, who cares?

Look, not everyone is important, and we are just going to have to face the fact that our ordinary lives, no matter how hard we try, will never seem more than that. Ordinary.

Get a life, Tweeters!

Rant over.

[jman800]

Didn't read all the posts on this forum yet about this but oh well Im going to say it.

Google already tried to buy Twitter but Twitter turned them down, not sure if anyone knew that yet, or if its old news etc, just putting it out there. :rolleyes:

[yourstation]

Just wanted to throw this out there as I am unconvinced either way Apple has made a history of entering software markets for it's own platforms where they can gain significant market share. With EA being a great histrocial game developer (with many classics I would like to see redeveloped for the iPhone) would it not make some sort of sense for Apple to have a game developer in their camp, especially with OSX itself looking to sell itself as a more viable game platform to the PC crowd. Your thoughts please.....

[rwilliams]

Twitter and SMS both need to die. Their arbitrary and absurdly short length limits are causing serious injury to the English language.

OMFG U R SO NOT KEWL. ALL MAI FRENZ TWEET. IDK Y U DONT. LOLZ!!

:cool::D

[Plymouthbreezer]

Eh, mind as well. Apple does have money to burn.

[MikeTheC]

http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/6120/appletookovermycompanyt.png

[MacManiac76]

http://img407.imageshack.us/img407/6120/appletookovermycompanyt.png

I want that shirt! :p

Maybe :apple: should start its own clothing line instead :D

[TripleF]

A single SMS message is limited to 160 characters, isn't it?

From the Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS):

Depending on which alphabet the subscriber has configured in the handset, this leads to the maximum individual Short Message sizes of 160 7-bit characters, 140 8-bit characters, or 70 16-bit characters (including spaces)

I guess some other countries use 8-bit = 140 characters? Still no really good reason why Twitter uses 140 chars.

[LizKat]

No. Way.
Nope.
Huh uh.
Not happening.

+1. It will never happen.

The closest Apple ordinarily gets to the great unwashed public commentariat is in permitting reviews of iTunes Store offerings, which are reviewed and are sometimes removed if enough people complain about the same outrageously offensive post.

If you think Apple will risk owning the second-hand smoke of whatever the sum of all twitterings offers the planet on the average Tuesday morning, think again.

[overcast]

This is the crux of it.

Why would a profitable company (Apple) spend money to acquire a company that has no revenue stream, no possibility of revenue stream, and apparently looses 70% of it's newly signed up members within a month?

Sounds more like a Microsoftian move to me. ;)
No, it sounds like a Google move. The kings of buying crap that goes no where.

[SpitzerCR]

I would expect this to happen... but who knows.

I think apple keeps its current business plan very simple and effective (well not really simple, but).

Apple doesnt do what alot of companies do and it does great.

[northy124]

Twitter... hell no, it sucks. Apple would be making a bad decision there:eek:

[SpitzerCR]

I dont twitter... and niether should apple.. LOL

[crackbookpro]

I don't see it happening. I haven't seen apple have tendencies like this at all lately...

CrackBookPro:cool:

[PlaceofDis]

I guess some other countries use 8-bit = 140 characters? Still no really good reason why Twitter uses 140 chars.

at the inception of twitter, it was a tool to use from your cell phone by tweeting via text messages, and it is still widely used in that manner, hence the limit.

[TuffLuffJimmy]

From the Wikipedia entry (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMS):

Depending on which alphabet the subscriber has configured in the handset, this leads to the maximum individual Short Message sizes of 160 7-bit characters, 140 8-bit characters, or 70 16-bit characters (including spaces)

I guess some other countries use 8-bit = 140 characters? Still no really good reason why Twitter uses 140 chars.

It is a good reason. That's why it's called microblogging. You only have 160 characters per text message, and if people are receiving your updates then twitter needs those extra 20 characters for formatting, like adding your user name and other info.

Many people still use Twitter exclusively on their phones.

[ZeroCorpse]

Man, I hope Twitter goes away. I hate it. Apple owning it would be hard to cope with... I think Twitter is the worst thing to happen to computers since Windows ME.

[okrelayer]

Im thinking twitter is going to see its long term success in that it being an RSS reader for 'everybody'. 90% of internet users dont know what the heck an RSS feed or reader is, but just about all of those people know that you can follow your favorite websites, and blogs, and news channels on twitter. which brings the news to them, in a very RSS way, but not through the confusing RSS MUMBO JUMBO.

once they get on twitter and use it for those activities, then they might make friends, and use it as twitter was originally set out to be. just how i see it

[SpitzerCR]

which means apple should acquire them??? ^^^^^

[celtikmind]

As I remember it, the 'bird' on the computer doesn't say 'twitt, twitt' - it said 'I quit, quit, quit'! :D

But I don't use twitter and never will. If Apple buys twitter through the means of their excessive premium prices I'll sell my Mac. I'll be too embarrassed to affiliate with anything Apple. :o

[mikes70mustang]

i have a twitter account, ive tried to use it in many ways, and i dub it garbage, good for wasting time if you have time to waste

[itsbarry]

Apple SHOULD buy Twitter if they can get them for under a billion. Twitter has some really good talent. Apple could use people well versed in making cool internet based projects. Not to mention, they could probably make Twitter into a full-fledged search engine with their funds.

It's the talent.

:apple:

[celtikmind]

I wouldn't consider 'a nack for gossip'ing' talent. I'm sorry, I just won't.

[itsbarry]

I wouldn't consider 'a nack for gossip'ing' talent. I'm sorry, I just won't.

I'm talking about the talent that created Twitter. The same guys that made Blogger. Apple could use their expertise, seeing that Apple has little in the "Internet" space.

:apple:

[ppc750fx]

What value does Twitter have?

They have yet to turn a profit, and the majority of their "content"... well who are we kidding -- what useful information can you really fit into 140 characters?

[TuffLuffJimmy]

I don't believe in the Apple Twitter deal, just like everyone else. But seriously, quit knocking it. You guys are just using it wrong!

[orbital~debris]

Has anyone noticed that Apple's Movie Trailers site (recently rebranded as iTunes Movie Trailers (http://www.apple.com/trailers/)) now contains a link to Trailers On Twitter (http://twitter.com/itunestrailers/).

This, plus the feature article on Twitter and their use of Macs…

Something's brewing.
Maybe.

[celtikmind]

Has anyone noticed that Apple's Movie Trailers site (recently rebranded as iTunes Movie Trailers (http://www.apple.com/trailers/)) now contains a link to Trailers On Twitter (http://twitter.com/itunestrailers/).

This, plus the feature article on Twitter and their use of Macs…

Something's brewing.
Maybe.

This... is not good. :(

[andiwm2003]

yeah right:rolleyes:

the twitter founder said recently in an interview that the company is in the value generation phase and will experiment with revenue generation models in a year or so but they have very patient investors (he literally said that!).

translation: we burn tons of cash and have no idea how we ever make money but we screw our investors as long as possible.

apple has no use for twitter and twitter will fade away.

my 2 cents (equals worth of twitter)

p.s.: that is a economic evaluation of twitter. the service as such is a great idea and well done. just not profitable.

[Apple Corps]

Apple SHOULD buy Twitter if they can get them for under a billion. Twitter has some really good talent. Apple could use people well versed in making cool internet based projects. Not to mention, they could probably make Twitter into a full-fledged search engine with their funds.

It's the talent.

:apple:

So Apple pays a BILLION dollars to acquire Twitter talent which could be replicated for way way less than that? And then they are going to take on Google in the search arena? And how would Twitter's platform / skill set translate to a search engine? Disambiguation and/or conflation and/or statistical projection are not, that I am aware of, parts of Twitter's "assets".

[Nyan]

I think it's a good idea.

[Apple Corps]

I think it's a good idea.

Nyan - would you explain WHY you think it is a good idea? What does it do for Apple, its stock holders, customers?

[Prekesh]

Using Twitter is just a fad, it will die out in a few months, a year tops.

[yizzle0912]

well considering apple has $29 billion in cash reserves, they easily have the money to buy out twitter, ea, and multiple other companies if they wanted to. But the fact that they're holding on to that amount of cash means that they want to do SOMETHING with it, well see in the next year or so...

[martijn.s]

what a ridiculous rumor why on earth would Apple buy twitter ?