

With 230M active users, Talking Tom Cat apps are bigger than Twitter - hepha1979
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/feb/10/talking-tom-cat-outfit7-apps

======
akumen
Everyone seems to be missing the irony of the situation.

Twitter despite loosing $500M a year etc etc is an almost $30B market cap that
is bigger than a lot of more traditional companies with a business model!

Whereas, Outfit7 is a 20-something person operation that is brining in
millions in recurring revenue every month (200K on Xmas Day 2011).

~~~
tsunamifury
Twitters revenue is more than half a billion a year. Outfit7 is nowhere near
this.

Combined with the global application of twitter versus a children's game, the
potential value is far far higher with twitter.

Your logic is akin to me saying my small company made six figures this year,
so I'm worth more than twitter.

~~~
josefresco
_potential value_

Sorry but that makes me chuckle. If I had a nickle for all of the "potential
value" calculations of now dead businesses, I'd have a lot of "actual value"
in my bank account.

Are we so far removed from the last crash that potential value is still
considered equal to actual cash money?

~~~
akumen
That's the thing. The value is not "potential" as it would have been when
Twitter was still a startup. As of right now the company has an about 30B
market cap ... as big as Raytheon, for example, and bigger than LinkedIn,
Northrop Grumman Corporation, BEIERSDORF, Tesla and T-mobile.

~~~
josefresco
Share price drops (which can happen for many reasons) and that market cap
looks similarly foolish. Market cap is only as impressive as the product or
services the company actually offers. The companies you list have real
products for sale in mature markets. Twitter is still trying to figure out how
to monetize effectively in a very fickle market (free social networking) .. I
don't think Northrop Grumman is having trouble figuring out how to make money
selling fighter jets.

------
awwstn
They have 14 apps, and I suspect they may have arrived at this number by
adding together the active user counts for each app. So, if I have all 14
apps, then I might count as 14 unique active users.

~~~
benologist
Apart from that in my case my 2 year old loves these apps so I've bought them
in 3 app stores and installed on 5 devices.

------
zhte415
I find it interesting that I've had a physical 'Talking Tom' (as in, a 15 inch
tall plastic cat in a pose on its hind legs with a keypad for a chest) for at
least 2 years. And no idea it was an app.

It cost about $5 in a local market. Pressing #9 on the keypad allows lagged
realtime speech playback (from whatever it hears) accentuated in tone and
speed.

For the tactile touch, the physical one is great for young kids.

------
chiph
The nieces have these apps installed. The new "My Talking Tom" is essentially
a Tamigotchi with in-app purchases (if anyone is old enough to remember those
toys..)

Feed it, play with it, and it grows up and demands ever-pricier food. We
haven't found the point yet where the cost of the food exceeds the coins you
make by just playing the game, but I expect those curves intersect.

~~~
SDGT
> if anyone is old enough to remember those toys..

Ouch. Are we at this point now where kids born in the mid 80's are "old"?

Soon you're going to be telling me kids these days have newfangled devices
that have better graphics than my yellow X-Men LCD handheld game!

I think I may still have a Tamagotchi and Digimon sitting around in my
basement.

~~~
mhurron
There is a classic rock station here that plays Nirvana. Classic rock, 90's
music. wtf is that?

~~~
laumars
"classic" in that context refers to the track being of an outstanding quality
that it's appeal would be timeless, rather than the age of the track at this
current point in time.

It's a little bit like how Classical radio stations play modern compositions.
It's the Classical style rather than age.

~~~
mhurron
No one thinks that.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_rock](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classic_rock)

This is the definition that people expect when they hear 'Classic Rock' -

"In the United States, the classic rock format features music ranging
generally from the late 1960s to the late 1980s, primarily focusing on hard
rock and blues rock popularized in the 1970s"

Also, Nirvana is grunge or Alternative, not Classic Rock.

~~~
laumars
I think you're getting too hung up on genre names and missing the bigger
picture.

I used to see the same thing in the electronic music scene. Eventually it lead
to half a dozen different subgenres defined primarily by the tone of the kick
drum. It was nuts.

My point being this is a commercial radio station, normal rules of music
snobbery don't apply. Thus their definition of the station is simply popular
guitar music that isn't being hammered on the teeny stations nor offends any
major demographics. And grunge or not, _Nevermind_ was a popular album with
"poppy rocky singles".

By loosening their definition of "classic rock" they're attempting to appeal
to the largest number of people. Thus my original statement stands.

~~~
Crito
Similarly, "modern rock" stations frequently play music from the late 60s and
70s. It's just what people expect.

------
Peroni
_The Talking Tom and Friends apps aren’t just for kids_

Really? These apps are also directed at adults? I find that exceptionally hard
to believe.

~~~
pisarzp
My GF is 29 and she also uses this app. Although I find it hard to believe
too:)

------
jimejim
Part of the reason is because this is one of those apps that annoys the hell
out of you to "upgrade" and get more crap. I uninstalled them pretty quick.

The apps are all basically the same with different characters, and they're
annoying even if your kids enjoy them for a bit.

------
deletes
Selling virtual money to children...

------
binxbolling
Talking Tom Cat versus Twitter has to be one of the worst comparisons I've
seen in a while. As a small curiosity at the bottom of this article... fine.
As part of the headline and lede? Come on, it's ridiculous.

~~~
eitland
Honest question: Why?

(Full disclosure: long term twitter naysayer here : )

~~~
binxbolling
Twitter is not competing with that cat. At all. The comparison tells us
absolutely nothing meaningful at all: you can be wildly successful and have
less users than TTC, or you can have way more users than TTC and be doing
terribly. In no way, shape, or form should TTC be used as a measuring stick
for Twitter's value or success. Again, I think it's sort of an interesting
statistic, but featuring it so prominently is designed to hold the comparison
up as something Very Meaningful & Insight™... which it just isn't, and I can't
begin to fathom the rationale for why it would be.

------
Thiz
My daughter loves Tom and Angela.

She sings all their love songs and I know them very well for I repeat them
silently while coding all day.

------
josefresco
The two key factors to these (IMHO crappy apps) are the fact that the animal
echos what the child says in a high-pitch funny sounding voice, and when "hit"
it reacts. Rinse, repeat (a million times) and you have a hit for the 2-4 year
old age range.

Wish there was an app that did away with the "hitting" feature but it is what
it is.

------
wsr
Can someone help me estimate the valuation of Outfit7? I can't seem to find it
anywhere. Many thanks in advance!

~~~
tzaman
I doubt you'll find it since it's a private Slovenian company.

~~~
deletes
The founder may be Slovenian, but the company is not.

Looks like it is registered in Cyprus.

[http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/sn...](http://investing.businessweek.com/research/stocks/private/snapshot.asp?privcapId=134284315)

\-----

[http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&pre...](http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=http%3A%2F%2Fpodjetnistvo.finance.si%2F335680%2FOutfit7-Do-
bogastva-z-zabavo-na-dotik&act=url)

This article states they were first registered in Slovenia with the name
Ekipa7 then they moved the company to Cyprus with the name Outfit7.

------
CWIZO
Fun fact. The founders of Outfit7 went from nothing to richest Slovenians in
about two years! I always like to use them as an example when people from my
home country say that the only way to get rich is by being a crock.

------
lmm
Maybe this will be the impetus the Guardian needs to stop reporting random
twitter posts as though they were news.

Or maybe we'll start seeing "breaking news" on cat activities.

~~~
untog
I don't see the connection. It is true that there are relatively few Twitter
users, but those users tend to be exactly the kind of people that make news -
politicans, celebrities, etc.

So if anything it makes even more sense that news outlets would use Twitter as
a source.

