Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Sources: Google In Talks To Acquire Twitter

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 66 posts

Re: Sources: Google In Talks To Acquire Twitter

#11

Post by [deleted] »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #8
_bn wrote: post #7

I find it funny how Arrington links to previous posts where he cites himself having some profound knowledge about the importance of a company or product. Hey mike, you're a journalist, not a CEO. When it comes to business, you really don't know your head from your ass.

Ummm...actually, TechCrunch may have started as Mike posting stories in his underwear years ago, but it's a thriving startup in its own right today, between TC, Crunchbase, TC50, Crunchgear, etc, etc. I bet the whole mess is worth $50 - 100m.

[deleted]

Re: Sources: Google In Talks To Acquire Twitter

#12

Post by brandnewlow »

JabavuAdams wrote: post #4
brandnewlow wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when/if he's proven wrong? What real consequences will he face? None.

Meh. Start a site, like longbets, where you retroactively compare pundits' predictions with what actually happened.

But still. How will that affect him at all? There are no consequences for him being wrong. He won't lose advertisers. He won't lose RSS readers. He only gains pageviews, mindshare, subscribers and google hits by running this stuff and then updating it later to say it's not true.

I don't have a point here, this just strikes me as a pretty weird situation.

Re: Sources: Google In Talks To Acquire Twitter

#14

Post by yan »

jonknee wrote: post #5
JabavuAdams wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. Start a site, like longbets, where you retroactively compare pundits' predictions with what actually happened.

One of those just started: http://wrongtomorrow.com/ I should start adding Mike Arrington quotes, he's almost as bad as Scoble.

exactly the idea I had for a site.

Re: Sources: Google In Talks To Acquire Twitter

#16

Post by tdavis »

brandnewlow wrote: post #12
JabavuAdams wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meh. Start a site, like longbets, where you retroactively compare pundits' predictions with what actually happened.

But still. How will that affect him at all? There are no consequences for him being wrong. He won't lose advertisers. He won't lose RSS readers. He only gains pageviews, mindshare, subscribers and google hits by running this stuff and then updating it later to say it's not true. I don't have a point here, this just strikes me as a pretty weird situation.

It probably has to do with the ultimate irrelevance of the information being presented. I read the headline and cared for all of 2 seconds. If you were a respected pundit and you said "Global warming will kill us in a year if we don't all buy electric cars tomorrow", and we all went and bought electric cars, and you were wrong, the consequences would likely be far more severe. Arrington posts unfounded rumors. About the Internet. Eh.

Re: Sources: Google In Talks To Acquire Twitter

#18

Post by mattmaroon »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #8
_bn wrote: post #7

I find it funny how Arrington links to previous posts where he cites himself having some profound knowledge about the importance of a company or product. Hey mike, you're a journalist, not a CEO. When it comes to business, you really don't know your head from your ass.

Ummm...actually, TechCrunch may have started as Mike posting stories in his underwear years ago, but it's a thriving startup in its own right today, between TC, Crunchbase, TC50, Crunchgear, etc, etc. I bet the whole mess is worth $50 - 100m.

Define "worth" in that context. Do you really think someone would pay that much for it now?

Re: Sources: Google In Talks To Acquire Twitter

#19

Post by mattmaroon »

"Real time search" is a great new buzzphrase, like "social graph", used to make a startup sound important rather than just popular and to therefore justify lofty valuations.

Any information worth having will still be worth having a half hour later when you can find it on real news outlets, professionally written and researched and with more than 140 characters.

This is all predicated on the ridiculous notion that "shit, a plane just crashed in the Hudson, that was freakin awesome" is news. If anything, that very event proved that people crave much more than headlines. They spent a few hours reading about it on Twitter and a few weeks watching about it on CNN.

Re: Sources: Google In Talks To Acquire Twitter

#20

Post by mattmaroon »

mattmaroon wrote: post #18
ryanwaggoner wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ummm...actually, TechCrunch may have started as Mike posting stories in his underwear years ago, but it's a thriving startup in its own right today, between TC, Crunchbase, TC50, Crunchgear, etc, etc. I bet the whole mess is worth $50 - 100m.

Define "worth" in that context. Do you really think someone would pay that much for it now?

Btw, for comparison, HuffPo raised at a $75m pre-money valuation (announced Dec 1 but negotiated and finalized possibly before the economy went haywaire) and they have about 4x the traffic of TechCrunch.

http://siteanalytics.compete.com/huffingtonpost.com+techcrun...

I feel like you're an order of magnitude off there.

Post reply on HN