
Apple should buy Twitter, and they should do it now - ssclafani
http://patrickbgibson.tumblr.com/post/36041799210/apple-and-twitter/
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debacle
> Apple should buy Twitter not for its social network, but for its talent and
> technology.

What? Seriously? Apple should _acquihire_ Twitter?

> The social network is basically an added bonus.

I think we're done here.

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neya
I am generally wary of these self-proclaimed "experts" writing about topics
they don't have much idea about.

1) This guy is not a part of* Twitter, so he knows nothing about what
Twitter's situation is from the _inside_.

2) This guy is not a part of* Apple, he has no idea about what Apple's budgets
and plans and areas of interest are.

If I were an executive from say, the buyer, that is Apple, give me one good
reason why I should listen to this guy's advice?

Writing controversial headlines is good for pageviews, but if you don't know
what you're talking about, you might as well not create a stir in an otherwise
peaceful community.

(*part of = part of the organization)

~~~
tgrass
Respectfully disagree.

Twitter and Apple exist in the public sphere and they have many stakeholders.
The public regulates corporations on many issues (down to the local planning
board) so to limit discussion of a corporation to only those on the inside
denies the reality that they have effects on the outside.

To take an extreme example: Nader and his book Unsafe at Any Speed.

Twitter and Apple are integrated in our lives (some more than others). Like
Luther nailing his Theses to the church door, creating a stir is sometimes
necessary.

To say one shouldn't create a stir seems conservative - if not defensive.

(If the author owns one share of Apple would that give him the right?)

~~~
debacle
You're conflating social upheaval with uninformed blogspam? I think Luther was
intimately aware of the ongoings of the church, and Nader wrote a reference-
backed book on the subject - he was an expert.

~~~
tgrass
"To take an extreme example."

I am not defending the piece as some monumental treatise.

BUT...

by this argument, an environmentalist asking for protection against pollution
could be dismissed by a CEO who claims the market for pricing those
externalities can't/aren't understood by those outside of the shop.

And...the corporation today could be easily compared in its breadth and
omnipotence to the church of the 16th century.

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garethadams
Interesting that the first "other problem" Apple has is listed as

* Apple can’t update its online store without taking it offline first.

In my experience it's a minority view that Apple are _unable_ to do this. It
seems more likely that it's a pure marketing decision, built around Apple's
very successful hype machine approach.

For all of Apple's failings it's a stretch to suggest that they aren't
technically competent enough to build an online store.

~~~
Kylekramer
According to Gruber, they actually aren't technically competent enough to
build an online store that doesn't require taking it down:
<http://twitter.com/gruber/status/264135810566209537>

~~~
DannyBee
This was true a few years ago. I have a friend who works on it, and got him
drunk enough one night to admit this :)

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lucian1900
> Android is still ugly, but it’s much less ugly than it was a few years ago.

It this opinion common? Trying friends' iOS devices, I can't say I've ever
thought "gee, this is so much prettier than my Android phone".

~~~
benwerd
Extremely. It's not so much that the iOS devices are prettier - although their
UX simplicity is hard to argue with - but that Android's extra power and
flexibility also comes with more interface complexity. People find it hard. To
the point that my parents and girlfriend all have trouble placing phone calls
with my Galaxy S2.

I still love it, but it's got a way to go.

~~~
rahoulb
It's not just the stock apps - there is a culture amongst Apple 3rd party
developers to discuss, refine and push design and interaction forwards.

The only time I've seen it amongst Android devs is for that alarm clock app
[1], whereas it's a regular talking point about iOS apps (the latest being
Paper discussing their colour-picker [2]).

[1] <http://dewith.com/2012/an-android-design-process/> [2]
[http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/31/3578672/paper-1-3-color-p...](http://www.theverge.com/2012/10/31/3578672/paper-1-3-color-
pogo-connect)

~~~
king_jester
There's been a lot more activity lately about app design and quality in the
Android community. Google esp. has made a big push to start talking about
these things in accessible formats, the most notable format being live
streams, G+ hangouts, and youtube archives of said streams and hangouts:
<http://www.youtube.com/user/androiddevelopers>

Things aren't perfect, but things are getting better and we are starting to
see a community come together that wants strong, high quality design.

------
podperson
I agree with the fundamental observation: Google is getting better at a lot of
the stuff Apple does faster than Apple is getting better at the stuff Google
does. This isn't surprising, Apple is a very, very focused company.

Here's where the article lost me: "They (Twitter) _own_ scale". Seriously,
Twitter has gotten shaky under load despite not doing push or even live
updating its web page (compare this to Facebook's timeline).

For that matter, iTunes represents scale on a level unimaginable to Twitter.
How much data does the writer think Apple is vending to support all the on-
demand video, app purchases, and whatnot? Sure, iTunes goes down now and then,
but so do Netflix and Hulu.

But there were a number of incorrect but less annoying observations
beforehand. E.g. Apple doesn't NEED to take its online store offline to update
stuff. It updates stuff all the time. Consider the rumor factory around Apple,
I suspect the main reason is to stop folks spelunking the Apple Store
constantly (especially during the lead-up to announcements) -- which they do
ANYWAY.

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akandiah
I gave up taking the article seriously after I read the statement about
WebObjects. The first release of WebObjects was in 1995. It's gone through
some radical changes since it was first introduced. The biggest of them was
the conversion of the framework from Objective C-based to Java. Just because a
framework is old, it doesn't mean that it's bad. ﻿

~~~
skyebook
This was a bit of a bust for me as well. Talking about Apple's web services
being terrible and then slamming the technology that has made them oodles of
money and rarely - if ever - has problems... It seemed a bit extreme.

~~~
Aqua_Geek
> Talking about Apple's web services being terrible and then slamming the
> technology that has made them oodles of money and rarely - if ever - has
> problems...

You can make oodles of money off of crappy infrastructure[1]. The fact of the
matter is that Apple's web services really are terrible – especially from a
developer's perspective. Why do I have to use Apple's tools to add a device to
my iOS Developer account[2]? Why isn't there an API for retrieving reviews for
my apps? (Yes, I know about the RSS feed – it's terrible and currently broken
once you get past page 10.) Or app rankings? Why isn't there an API to
retrieve my app sales reports? Why isn't there an API to iTunes? (Yes, I know
about the Enterprise Partner Feed – that's not the same thing.) Don't even get
me started about Radar, their bug reporter[3]. The list goes on and on.

1\. The infrastructure isn't necessarily "crappy" for them – it apparently
works well enough for them internally. The problems begin once you try to
interface with them as a third party.

2\. There are some web scraper tools that allow you to do this, such as
@mattt's Cupertino: <https://github.com/mattt/cupertino/>

3\. bugreporter.apple.com

~~~
skyebook
Crappy infrastructure != crappy code and web application design.

\- No API for app reviews? Business decision. \- No API for app rankings?
Business decision. \- No API for... you get my point.

If apple saw a reason to have these things, they'd have them. Blaming the
WebObjects stack just _doesn't_ make sense.

bugreporter.apple.com? I'm with you, it needs to go the way of its 10 year old
capsule buttons.

------
GotAnyMegadeth
Do you think you'd have to wait 6 weeks before apple approved your tweet and
let it go live?

~~~
olgeni
No, but you will be assigned 6 pre-approved tweets per month (for a modest
$99/year fee).

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jdevonport
In my opinion it's Square, not Twitter that makes sense for Apple the most.

Payments has the potential to be a multi billion dollar business for them if
executed correctly.

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badclient
The best product company should acquire one of the weakest ones?

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jfb
This is largely nonsensical. Apple has trouble with "The Cloud", so it should
buy a company that doesn't solve any of its problems, as a signaling device to
potential future hires? What? And I take second place to no man in my disdain
for WebObjects, but I know for a fact that a) Apple has very good engineers
working on tooling and b) it really doesn't matter to the problems as stated,
which are much more about executive attention.

The cloud stuff doesn't _make money_. Apple is (or was, when I was there last)
an extremely profit conscious organization. The reason that the various
previous internet initiatives were failures is not because Apple can't hire
good engineers, or uses yesterday's technology, but rather because no
executive was going to make it to VP by spending a bunch of money and more
importantly engineer time on something that _by design_ loses money, and has
only the vaguest connection to driving adoption of hardware.

This latter has certainly changed -- if the OP has noticed that Android "Just
Works" in ways that iOS doesn't, rest assured that Apple knows.

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rburhum
Thinking that Apple should buy an overpriced company (in billions) that doesnt
have a sustainable business model to improve their web serices is ludicrous at
best. If you are going to spend money in that scale, buy TomTom. At least you
would get a super profitable business and solve a real problem Apple has
(worldwide maps and amazing geodata collection teams)

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gushie
I always thought the Apple webstore going offline was more a marketing hype
thing, rather than a technical one.

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cmdkeen
But does Apple need to build that level of scale? The article makes valid
points about Apple needing to beef up its web teams - but a $1bn acqhire seems
excessive. Better cherry picking some top quality individuals to drive a
vision and letting them lose on talented developers than buying an entire
infrastructure that isn't really what Apple wants. Plus Apple could never kill
off Twitter. It's too "hot" - an with that comes attention. Apple's pockets
are deep enough for all and sundry to sue, or governments to get in glossy
fits over (allegedly) blasphemous/libellous tweets.

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cllns
Can someone give a rough range for how much Twitter would cost to buy?
Instagram was $1bn, and I'd say Twitter is at least an order of magnitude
higher, no?

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djt
Im sure for around a Billion dollars they could probably do some pretty crazy
stuff in-house since advertising/media isnt really their thing.

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erichocean
Apple would be far better off buying Joyent.

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Kilimanjaro
I rather spend $10B in producing ten million TVs and selling them at 50%
profit.

Jobs would agree.

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emehrkay
Duckduckgo would make more sense in my opinion.

