10 comments

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  Justin Thorp

  7 months ago

  Heh... Nice headline.
  
  Hmm... don't know if it'd make sense. Would twitter just get swallowed up and become part of Facebook or would it remain separate? I like that it's a separate experience.
  
  I'd dig it though if you could suck in your friends facebook status updates into your twitter newsfeed.
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  mjsante

  7 months ago

  Thanks for the update, Nick.
  
  Love Thorpus' idea about sucking FB status info into Twitter. Improvement Request #124
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  Joe M

  7 months ago

  First off, even though Twitter's team has not yet found a great way to monetize, I think its a terrible idea to consider an acquisition by Facebook. Twitter is a much smaller application by comparison, and regardless of perceived valuation, any acquisition for anything less than 50% cash is ludicrous. Besides, Facebook cant really afford them with real "street money". Twitter, in my opinion is a much more focused app, and much more easily monetized. Additionally, with Twitter being so much more simple than facebook, its overhead is much lower and its cash burn rate is much much less by comparison.
  
  Facebook has proven that they are great at generating traffic, and just shy of terrible at generating sustainable cash flows. An acquisition of Twitter by Facebook could be ultimately disastrous, and the idea reminds me of what we just saw with General Motors and Chrysler where they originally wanted government backing to support a merger before the bail out talks began. My point here, both sites have PAPER VALUATIONS, and they are not generating sustainable revenue, so what is the sense of merging two companies that are not making money? Monetize and focus on what you're good at. On the flipside, should an acquisition take place, and Facebook proves that it is ultimately unable to proceed, the Twitter founders and investors loose everything they've worked so hard to achieve and all the windfall prospects are gone.
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  andyclib

  7 months ago

  In general, acquisitions make sense (even at inflated valuations) when the threat of a competitor purchasing the acquisition target could result in a major liability in market standing. Based on this reasoning, which of Facebook's competitors has the capital and market cap to acquire Twitter? None, I see.
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  mojaam

  7 months ago

  I say Facebook add a few more features to their status feature and make it more robust.
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  stoltzc

  7 months ago

  Nick--Great report, as usual.
  
  One detail catches me short: That a Twittereur may be rewarded based on audience size. It's already going on with recognitions such as wallpaper grandts for high performers.
  
  But I would not have interest in building a big audience; I Twitter for the "ambient intimacy," and secondarily [admitted hereby] to promote my blog entries.
  
  I love the idea that I reach an audience with Twitter that has selected me [and mostly vice-versa], and am intrigued by how Tweets can travel through these non-overlapping social circles across the Twittersphere. If I know strangers are trying to build audience by following me in hopes I'll follow back--and to generate revenue with my attention. . .for me, that will change the social nature of the platform.
  
  Geez, am I getting sentimental about "original" Twitter? Kick me.
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  KristenNicole

  7 months ago

  I'd definitely be interested to see the social capital value for individuals (online marketers, etc) should such an acquisition ever go thru
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  Stop Smoking

  7 months ago

  It will be interesting to see if they finally figure out how to create those revenues. It shouldn't be that hard for them, considering their growth and all.
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  dcSportsGuy

  7 months ago

  Given the nature of the terms, Twitter would not be best served agreeing to an acquisition as Joe argues. I know some of us out there use the Twitter application to integrate tweets with our FB status, but I am not a fan of feeding tweets that direction but would rather see FB do something like thorpus suggested with Twitter sucking in FB status updates.
  
  Unless one is a reputable blogger, microblogging does not lend itself to flooding FB profiles with dozens of Tweets daily to your news feed (which often angers non-techies in your friend network) that is of course, unless the news feed was build out to include a Twitter tab.
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  Robert MacEwan

  7 months ago

  Perhaps it's time to set up a social media union where the members of these sites can get a cut off the profits from advertising. We create the value - time they share the profits.
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