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Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week

wsj.com

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Re: Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week

#31

Post by seibelj »

mrweasel wrote: post #22

Why would anyone want to buy Twitter? Sure they have a great brand, loyal fans, but pretty much no way to monetizing them. It's pretty obvious that Twitter has access to tons of interesting data, I just question if it's anything more than simply "interesting". While Twitter is huge, it's not really ubiquitous enough that you can use it for measuring things like effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

Rich people buy assets that allow them to influence the world or simply have it as a trophy. See Bezos and WaPo, John Henry and Boston Globe, Carlos Slim and the NYT.

I totally see someone famous buying Twitter just to own it, or another company like Disney who just wants it to break-even. It has cultural and influential value now separate from profit.

Re: Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week

#32

Post by pedrosorio »

jarsin wrote: post #20
mc32 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have difficulty imagining Disney being any better, so I'm curious to hear an argument for Disney.

They will replace all the devs with H1b Visa holders, and then censor any tweet calling them out on their illegal business practice. * Edit removed the word "outsource"

http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Twitter+Inc&job=Software+En...

Re: Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week

#33

Post by pavel_lishin »

untog wrote: post #25
mrweasel wrote: post #22

Why would anyone want to buy Twitter? Sure they have a great brand, loyal fans, but pretty much no way to monetizing them. It's pretty obvious that Twitter has access to tons of interesting data, I just question if it's anything more than simply "interesting". While Twitter is huge, it's not really ubiquitous enough that you can use it for measuring things like effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

How many news stories are there every day about a politician or a celebrity tweeting about X? Just because it isn't monetisable doesn't mean it isn't valuable to the right (media, probably) organisation.

If it's valuable, isn't it monetizable?

Re: Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week

#34

Post by untog »

rayalez wrote: post #24

Does anybody know why they have never tried to create a premium version? I've just googled, looks like they're making $0.55/user/month [1] I would have totally paid $7-$10/yr for no-bullshit version without ads, focused on user experience instead of manipulating my attention. I bet many other people would too. And I would use it way more actively as a result. Why do neither twitter nor facebook offer premium/business…

> Why do neither twitter nor facebook offer premium/business accounts?

Because it will cause their ad revenue to plummet. The users with money are the ones advertisers actually want to reach, so if you let them opt out of seeing advertising you'll just be left with an exclusive pool of users who won't buy anything. And no advertiser wants that.

Re: Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week

#35

Post by sigmar »

crabasa wrote: post #18

This is a sad outcome, but once upon a time Twitter had a choice: be the defacto messaging backbone for the Internet or compete with Facebook and be a destination website/app. They chose the latter and rewrote their TOS to effectively eliminate 3rd party development on their platform. An entire ecosystem of companies, products and tools was destroyed because Twitter couldn't imagine or articulate the value of powerin…

I think you are right. I was thinking yesterday how much I wish there were comment sections at the bottom of news articles that consisted of twitter posts (like how facebook has plugins for a comment field). It would make sharing the article or commenting thoughts very easy.

Re: Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week

#36

Post by trequartista »

Kind of surprised Facebook is not interested or at least there's no news of Facebook being interested. Facebook already owns social networking, messaging and photo-sharing. Twitter would fit nicely into this portfolio as a niche for breaking news. Plus this would be an amazing opportunity to build an integrated user profile across all these platforms.

Wonder what the DOJ and the anti-trust guys would think of this though.

Re: Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week

#37

Post by mrweasel »

untog wrote: post #25
mrweasel wrote: post #22

Why would anyone want to buy Twitter? Sure they have a great brand, loyal fans, but pretty much no way to monetizing them. It's pretty obvious that Twitter has access to tons of interesting data, I just question if it's anything more than simply "interesting". While Twitter is huge, it's not really ubiquitous enough that you can use it for measuring things like effectiveness of marketing campaigns.

How many news stories are there every day about a politician or a celebrity tweeting about X? Just because it isn't monetisable doesn't mean it isn't valuable to the right (media, probably) organisation.

It you can't monetise it, then how valuable it that data really? It doesn't matter how valuable your product is, if no one is willing to pay.

Perhaps the gossip magazines should pool their money and buy Twitter?

Re: Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week

#38

Post by proksoup »

crabasa wrote: post #18

This is a sad outcome, but once upon a time Twitter had a choice: be the defacto messaging backbone for the Internet or compete with Facebook and be a destination website/app. They chose the latter and rewrote their TOS to effectively eliminate 3rd party development on their platform. An entire ecosystem of companies, products and tools was destroyed because Twitter couldn't imagine or articulate the value of powerin…

They became the defacto place for public discussion instead.

The focus on 3rd party api's hindered that and would have hurt their growth in that regard maybe?

Journalism happens on twitter first, it's where famous people talk to each other, not facebook, yeah?

Re: Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week

#40

Post by dilap »

crabasa wrote: post #18

This is a sad outcome, but once upon a time Twitter had a choice: be the defacto messaging backbone for the Internet or compete with Facebook and be a destination website/app. They chose the latter and rewrote their TOS to effectively eliminate 3rd party development on their platform. An entire ecosystem of companies, products and tools was destroyed because Twitter couldn't imagine or articulate the value of powerin…

Even in their own product, they kept deemphasizing the messaging aspect of it -- from small things like timeline filtering & reordering to large things like Moments.
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