Will Google buy Twitter?
By Marques • Sep 3rd, 2007 • Category: Social NetworksIf you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
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For those of you who don’t know about it, Twitter is a mixture of blogging and instant messaging. It allows users to have a Twitter widget on their blogs and basically communicate small information to the visitors. One good example of Twitter use is done by Brain Auer at his Epic Edits photography blog. He uses Twitter to give visitors information about himself (what he is doing) or about announcements that are site related, thus increasing interaction with the visitors.
And what a buzz Twitter has been around the blogosphere. Everyone talks about Twitter, posts notes on Twitter use, analyzes Twitter, “digests” Twitter, … The list could go on forever.
Nonetheless, I’m still not a Twitter user. Maybe I’m loosing benefits, but I wasn’t convinced yet (and I’m not the only one).
What caught my attention was an article recently written by Russell Shaw at zdnet.com where he predicts that Sooner or later, Google will buy Twitter.
This prediction is based on several points of note like the capability to import contacts into Twitter, but only from Gmail, people that were working for Google are now in the Twitter team, etc.
If this were to happen, it wouldn’t surprise me that much. Google is on a hot pursuit for expansion into the blogging world, confirmed by the acquisition of Feedburner.com, the favorite blogger’s tool for RSS feed management, for a whopping $100 million.
With Twitter being used by more and more bloggers, it’s almost a natural step that some big company with money to invest will try to acquire it. Google is just a natural option.
And what do you think? Will Google buy Twitter anytime soon or let it grow some more and then place a bid? Tell us what you think…
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I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened within the next 6 months. The service has really gained in popularity with bloggers. I’d love to see Google grab it up and maybe give it a few updates (the current Twitter badges suck, for example).
Interesting, and I think you´re onto something. It wouldn´t surprise me much if Google attempted to buy Twitter. Google´s really expanding these days.
On a sidenote, well written, I really like bloggers actively using links to explain and expand on what they are writing about. I should get better at doing so.
Even.
Wasn’t Dodgeball (a 2005 Google acquisition) pretty much the same as Twitter? Why would Google do a better job with it now?
Hi Imran.
Dodgeball was more or less based on the same platform as Twitter, but on a much smaller scale. Besides that, it was more focused on locations as opposed to Twitter, which runs on a global scale.
Dodgeball was also much more personal than Twitter is and bloggers have found out about this, thus the popularity of Twitter amongst bloggers.
So, I still think that it would be a very smart move for Google to get their hands on Twitter.
Found you through coComment.
I use Twitter. Twitter has the potential of changing communication.
Its the backbone part of Twitter that makes is something someone will buy sooner or later. Through Twitter and all the supporting apps using the Twitter api you can have the following occur:
John is on vacation in Spain. He uses his vidoe phone to send video and voice updates via his Twitter account and the accounts he tied to it. His network has ties via mobile, site widgets, feeds, agregators, im, email an different accounts that will using use the feed api. Mark views it in Flckr, Barry in Photobucket, Susan in im, others with email or their modile device. Some will be able to response instantly and Jonh will receive it. Susan saw an item and asked him to grab it for her.
Twitter has the potential to change communications because different devices on different networks can receive and send back and forth, its much greater than sms or im alone.
Some as far as use goes use it for that now, other use it to document life, some are writing books, one line at a time.
my2cents, thnx.
google will only buy twitter if: a) they can’t come up with their own version and b) they see twitter becoming even a minor threat to their marketshare.
I think they will buy it, just a matter of when.