

Google Buys Twitter? Chris O'Brien's 11 Predictions for 2011 - almond
http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_16930409

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look_lookatme
I would like to see _someone_ buy Twitter, if only to have a different set of
engineers and product people tackle their issues. I find twitter search to be
very useful in theory, but useless in practice. Mostly I get the "older tweets
for <term> are unavailable" message.

If it takes an acquisition to make Twitter more useful, I'm all for it.

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elvirs
There are two spheres on twitter, the first one is a broadcasting tool, its
the accounts with large follower numbers broadcast their stuff, mostly its
promotional stuff but it has a use too. They pay attention to the tweets where
their username is mentioned and average joe whose voice was ignored now could
make some big brand listen to him and resolve a problem if he has one. the
other sphere is the chitchat region, where users with medium number of
followers and follow decent number of people have conversations, most of that
are retweets, which is just copies of someone's message, retweets are
pointless but provide good statistics for trends and stuff. anyway, twitter is
definitely useful because it is a large pool of current and latest
information, but you need really good filtering tools to get what exactly you
want, not unrelated noise. in terms of monetizing twitter is in trouble. they
want to stick ads in those 140 characters? its going to be hard as long as the
ads look like ads, but if they manage to learn about the user and his needs
for that particular moment so they could serve ads that do not look like ads
but are more the services that user needs at that point, then there is a
bingo. and yeah about google, i dont think google should buy twitter, it does
not fit, and google does not really need it. twitter would make a good company
standalone.

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pluies
The expression is "without further ado", broadly standing for "without any
more fuss", and not "without further adieu". "Adieu", borrowed from the French
word for "farewell", doesn't make any sense at all in this context.

I know it's nitpicking and doesn't add a lot, but still. And I can't even post
it on the website because it requires a facebook account. Blegh :(

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scorpion032
It depends on how well Google Me does.

If Google Me indeed takes off, as a social layer (on top of application and
presentation layer), they could just make buzz more prominent.

But if it doesn't, which it may, considering Google's failed investments in
Buzz, Wave, Me, investment to buy twitter would seem compelling.

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mikeryan
I'd actually be really surprised if Groupon doesn't go public this year.
Considering they just passed on Google's acquisition I don't think they're
going to have a better time to go public then in the next year, before their
brand gets too diluted with competitors. I think a lot of investors would also
be very happy to get in on a hot new tech property like Groupon, as the
economy inches back towards a recovery.

And a cloud bubble? Really its pretty damn obvious for the lsat year that
cloud based services are damn hot right now, but a bubble? This one is barely
just a prediction he's pretty much stating what is currently happening. He can
declare victory on this "prediction" on Jan 1.

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cloudwalking
If Twitter has no sustainable business model, I'm curious how Google is going
to make money with it.

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pluies
It wouldn't be the first time Google acquires an influential/"cool" business
without a business model, à la YouTube (which apparently isn't actually
profitable yet, years after it was created).

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cletus
> 8\. Venture capital blues: Expect both fundraising and investing to remain
> flat. While some firms will thrive, there's still an ongoing shakeout in
> this industry as the number of partners will continue to dwindle and returns
> will remain poor.

Huh? Is he in the same economy as me? Or is he deliberately excluding angel
and other forms of seed I vesting, which are becoming an ever-increasing
source of venture funding?

The big story here is that on the VC side there is a supply problem: meaning
companies need less money. Valuations are going up as the money in the system
competes for deals. An awful lot of companies can get profitable or acquired
on seed investing alone.

As for Bartz going, it should happen and he's right why: she can't articulate
what Yahoo is about.

Google buying Twitter? I doubt it. Not because Google doesn't want it but
because Evan Williams has already sold Blogger to Google so a) he doesn't need
the money and b) it didn't go that great. Twitter is hitting for the fences.

I can't see Facebook hitting 1 billion users this year. Facebook has the best
of problems: it's running out of people to add to its service.

Tech IPOs: because of Sarbanes-Oxley and other factors the tech IPO in the US
is basically dead except for the very biggest of companies. He contends none
of these will IPO this year. I tend to agree. Typically you have 6+ months
warning (through the rumor mill if nothing else) about a bi IPO, particularly
with all the auditing required, so we're already running out of 2011 for that.

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code_duck
I think that Google would very much like to acquire Twitter. They see their
lack of success in the social area as a problem, and anyone - MS, Yahoo,
facebook, etc. would love to own Twitter. The problem is as you note, Twitter
doesn't seem at all interested in being acquired.

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axod
I think the twitter hype has long peaked.

Could turn into another Digg.

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code_duck
Twitter seems to be doing fine, to me. It's a unique and focused service. Digg
was doing fine as well until they released a site makeover that completely
ignored why their community was interested in the site. Twitter's recent
improvements were well received, in contrast.

You've actually of that opinion about Facebook, but meanwhile, large numbers
of people never cease to predict that Facebook will soon control the entire
universe. So, opinions vary.

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axod
They're extremely different though. Facebook has a good, proven business
model. They kept control - people generally go to facebook.com.

However, twitter gave away control to 3rd party clients. Only a tiny number of
twitter action comes from twitter.com.

When most of your userbase uses 3rd party clients, you have very few
monetization options.

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Kylekramer
I don't know about that. Among the early adopter crowd, it is certainly true,
but Twitter much larger than that group now. Most people use Twitter from the
web or from an official Twitter app. I still think Twitter is going to have
very serious monetization problems, but third party clients aren't really a
problem. If anything, the third parties should be concerned about hitching
their wagon to a company that might not be too concerned about their success.

Reference: <http://blog.twitter.com/2010/09/evolving-ecosystem.html>

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code_duck
Quite true, it's not fun at all to develop software or a business based on a
platform and service that might change to make your business obsolete at
anytime.

Fred Wilson, an investor in Twitter, made a post when the article you linked
to came out, stating how fantastic he thought it was that Twitter was screwing
over their third party developers. A shift from 'filling in the gaps' to
'building on the platform', he thinks. This doesn't make me comfortable as I
depend on a couple of other companies he is involved with.

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greut
What about Jaiku?

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scorpion032
"HR acquisition"

