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Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

cnbc.com

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Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#341

Post by lmm »

thr0waway1239 wrote: post #82

Can someone actually explain to me how the situation came to this point where it practically looks as if Twitter's fate is being decided and played out in the media via endless speculation? It is not like Twitter is a tiny company with an unknown brand, few users and no possibility of improving its profit margins. I am not aware of what they are trying to do, but at the same time it is not as if they could have exhau…

What baffles me is how Twitter has survived this long. They've never made money. Their service is popular with celebrities and the media which is not nothing, but most people who try it find it does nothing for them. Who's been funding them up to this point?

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#344

Post by tuxracer »

jedisct1 wrote: post #342
hornbaker wrote: post #13

My bet is GOOG. They need a streaming newsfeed product in which to insert ads.

Yikes. If Twitter starts to insert ads in newsfeeds, a lot of people are likely to quit right away.

Uh, they already do

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#346

Post by jedisct1 »

tuxracer wrote: post #344
jedisct1 wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes. If Twitter starts to insert ads in newsfeeds, a lot of people are likely to quit right away.

Uh, they already do

???

Been using Twitter since 2008 and I never saw any.

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#347

Post by susan_hall »

Perhaps off-topic, but does anyone know why Twitter gave up on its effort to monetize its API? There was a moment, circa 2010, when that seemed like the obvious move. When Twitter first began to shut down access to its full firehose, it seemed clear that there were businesses willing to pay for its information. But Twitter suddenly turned away from that idea, and focused on advertising. Considering how many sites compete for advertising dollars, it seems crazy that Twitter felt that was the right way to go.

But then Facebook went down the same path, first promoting its API, then largely giving up on any attempt to monetize it.

And before that, way back in 2006, I tried to build a business that would rely on Technorati's API, which they briefly promoted, then gave up on.

There are a lot of companies that make money by selling information via an API. And there is tremendous competition for ad dollars. These 2 facts would lead me to expect more companies might try to make money from their APIs. But what happened in Twitter's case?

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#348

Post by digi_owl »

speeder wrote: post #143
dominotw wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you find yourself thinking that Twitter is a company with any real value What about non-monetary value like playing a key role in 'Arab Spring'[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_and_the_Arab_Spri...

You mean the same Arab Spring that sparked 4 or 5 civil wars (depending how you count), led to the rise of IS, and in the civil wars aftermaths caused more civil wars in neighbor countries that were invaded by foreign guerrilla fighters? When I made some napkin calculations some time ago, Arab Spring and its fallout so far killed about 300.000 people and displaced millions. Is the positive non monetary value enough t…

And that was started by a rise in grain prices thanks to crap harvests.

If anything, Facebook and Twitter kept a lid on things. Only when the governments cut the national net connections did things really hit the fan.

This likely because now people had to actually go out and talk to their neighbors to figure out what was happening, and thus were more easily pulled along.

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#349

Post by porjo »

bluthru wrote: post #161
owenwil wrote: post #23

Google acquiring Twitter is actually the best end result here. Salesforce is probably the worst. Lots of people hate the idea of a Google acquisition, but I think it's well suited because: - Google learnt from its mistakes with Google+ and is eager to not repeat them - The company is a very different one now from years ago - Google doesn't want to mess up identity again, so that wouldn't be an issue - Google mostly j…

>The company is a very different one now from years ago In what ways?

Milo Yiannopoulos' recent 'RIP Twitter' talk covers this https://youtu.be/JoLs61YwuSM?t=1986

Re: Twitter may receive formal bid, suitors said to include Salesforce and Google

#350

Post by [deleted] »

nl wrote: post #331
home_boi wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two platforms are completely different. The users of FB (and LinkedIn) put their real information on the website, allowing advertisers to target effectively which raises the average ad value on the website. Intuitively, revenue = ad value * # impressions. Twitter is in between anonymous forums (unfortunately they all died) and FB/LinkedIn in terms of ability of advertisers to target users. They're living off of h…

Yes, the anonymous accounts are a problem - but mostly because of the trolling, not the lack of identity. Snapchat and Instagram both have anonymous accounts and don't have a problem. Yet Twitter has people like Kim Kardashian selling tweets for $200K/tweet[1] (so there's your measurement of ad-value), and yet Twitter can't make money. Meanwhile, people are moving to Snapchat stories which is exactly the product Twit…

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