Here’s a heck of a rumor that we’ve sourced from two separate people close to the negotiations: Google is in late stage negotiations to acquire Twitter. We don’t know the price but can assume its well, well north of the $250 million valuation that they saw in their recent funding.
Twitter turned down an offer to be bought by Facebook just a few months ago for half a billion dollars, although that was based partially on overvalued Facebook stock. Google would be paying in cash and/or publicly valued stock, which is equivalent to cash. So whatever the final acquisition value might be, it can’t be compared apples-to-apples with the Facebook deal.
Why would Google want Twitter? We’ve been arguing for some time that Twitter’s real value is in search. It holds the keys to the best real time database and search engine on the Internet, and Google doesn’t even have a horse in the game. In a post last month called It’s Time To Start Thinking Of Twitter As A Search Engine, I wrote:
More and more people are starting to use Twitter to talk about brands in real time as they interact with them. And those brands want to know all about it, whether to respond individually (The W Hotel pestered me until I told them to just leave me alone), or simply gather the information to see what they’re doing right and what they’re doing wrong.
And all of it is discoverable at search.twitter.com, the search engine that Twitter acquired last summer.
People searching for news. Brands searching for feedback. That’s valuable stuff.
Twitter knows it, too. They’re going to build their business model on it. Forget small time payments from users for pro accounts and other features, all they have to do is keep growing the base and gather more and more of those emotional grunts. In aggregate it’s extremely valuable. And as Google has shown, search is vastly monetizable – somewhere around 40% of all online advertising revenue goes to ads on search listings today.
If this is accurate, it’s a brilliant deal for Google – the value of Twitter is only going to go up over time. And it will be Twitter founders Evan Williams and Biz Stone’s second sale to Google – they sold Blogger to them just five years ago. But there’s one big question – where’s Microsoft in all this? Letting Twitter go to Google only hurts them, badly, in the long term search game. This is an asset they need to be competing for aggressively.
Of course, it’ll be sad to see Twitter become just another subsidiary of Google, if this happens. I would have liked to have seen the company spread its wings a little longer to see what it could do.
Updated: Yet another source says the acquisition discussions are still fairly early stage, and the two companies are also considering working together on a Google real time search engine. But discussions between the companies are confirmed.
Update 2 (4/3/09): In a non-denial blog post entitled “Sometimes We Talk” Twitter co-Founder Biz Stone says: “It should come as no surprise that Twitter engages in discussions with other companies regularly and on a variety of subjects.”
Update 3: see here.
That’s an incredible rumor, and would be very interesting if it turns out to be true. Google could leverage Twitter, and Twitter needs a solid back-end. Should make a lot of sense.
Nice scoop if it’s the real deal, Mike.
I second that. I really hope that Google would just leave Twitter as it’s own, just under the Google name and infrastructure.
Yup, something like what they did with YouTube.
but then, why would they bought Jaiku in the first place?
nod and it can perpetually be a red mark on their balance sheet like youtube, too
Very cool.
Google swallowing up almost everything on its way.
Don’t be surprised on the day some hackers will reveal that Google knew the exact date of your periods since 7 years.
I pray they make a Jaiku out of Twitter..I want to read some real news from Tech blogs..
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Written by ICE
Born in NYC; Fifth child out of six. Happily married; Retired from NYSDOCS. Love the Lord Jesus; Living
well if they can fix the downs and falling , then it is good news
I agree, just switch it to Google’s servers and keep every employee there. We don’t need another GrandCentral or JotSpot that takes them 1.5 years to open it back up to the public.
I hope they don’t buy Twitter…
Exactly. Just now, Google is doing something which such an amazing service like Grandcentral, and I hope they won’t do anything like that to Twitter.
it’ll be sad to see Twitter become just another subsidiary of Google, if this happens. I would have liked to have seen the company spread its wings a little longer to see what it could do.
This is tragically true. Google is feeling wall street pressure to monitize the snot out everything.
Why is monetising the snot out of everything a bad thing? Everyone wants something for nothing these days, and I hate that from both sides.
I hate it as a developer, in that I have to justify trying to make a living to the ungrateful unwashed.
I hate it as a consumer, in that several games/services I liked and ad-clicked/donated to that have gone under because they weren’t monetizing the snot out of everything, surviving instead on ads/donations that dwindled too low.
its well sourced, but who knows. Usually simply posting the rumor shakes a lot more information out of the tree. We’ll be updating.
Going by twitter founder’s proclivity to develop something world changing and giving it away is something can’t be ruled out. But if this rumor is true, then for me I think it will be sad since I too wanted to see how far they could have gone.
—
@Sampad
I think Twitter is hardly world changing.
uh, actually it is James
Haha that has gotta be the dumbest comment of 2009.
“Twitter is hardly changing the world?” I mean Twitter and the user-generated “real-time” news are giving the news media a run for their money and revolutionary.
James:
What other mutli-access real time searchable communication/distribution platform that breaks news stories before anyone, including all the major new corps like FOX, CNN, ABC, etc?
I dunno guys – I’ve tried and don’t see anything interesting in twitter. To me, its a huge chat room. I even tried doing a search for “hang gliding” and found random comments like “I like hang gliding” and “that seems scary fun” but nothing usefull or interesting.
Maybe I’m missing the point – and if so would be greatfull for any insight/wisdom that’s shared.
World changing my foot…I have seen similar ‘news as it happens’ stuff on a lot of forums and orkut communities..and these have existed long before twitter was ‘conceived’..
Twitter is hardly world changing – you need to get out more buddy.
I’m not saying that it isn’t worth money or that people shouldn’t like it but to think it is going to change how people search or the quality of search is downright dim-witted.
Techcrunch itself makes Twitter to be a bigger deal than it really is, which is a fad. I’m really tired about seeing 4 twitter posts every day real people don’t care to much about it.
Techcrunch – please get on with real tech news and opinion not just being a twitter blog. ktksbai
People, Twitter is at least a fad, but world changing? If Twitter was to disappear tomorrow, I don’t think the world would be terribly impacted.
At its core, Twitter’s real value to people is as a micro social network and promotional platform. The news side of it is way overblown. Twitter is getting its traction in the media because celebrities and companies see it as a cheap and controlled way to push their message.
If Twitter was to disappear tomorrow, just about all of its uses could be replaced by Facebook.
Twitter isn’t world changing. It’s just received more undue publicity than Britney Spears so the public have flocked to it like seagulls to stale chips.
Twitter is a small portion of an idea so many have already had. It only works because it’s popular and it’s only popular because it’s still in the spotlight. Give it another 12-24 months and it will fizzle and die like all the other social networking instruments we’ve seen come and go over the years.
The only people who really appreciate Twitter are people trying to pedal their wares, so when the short-attention-spanned general public run off to play with the next set of shiny, jingling car keys the only people left on Twitter will be the marketing people trying to pitch to each other.
If this turns out to be true, hats off to you guys for sniffing it out so early.
Yup agree with Chris, good find here. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.
Nothing like premature backrubbing
So they are going to buy the ‘Poor Man’s Email System’? Thats what Goog CEO Eric Schmidt called Twitter. I hope they don’t put Adsense Ads after every few Tweets!
Schmidt was wrong, Twitter is the rich man’s IRC.
My first thought was – Mike’s going overboard with the April fools jokes.
It makes a lot of sense for Google. search.twitter.com has a lot of promise!
-TH
http://antiagin...w.blogspot.com/
Dont you think Google is increasingly becoming another MicroSoft? may be bigger and more monopolistic
The White House today is powered by Google, All key web properties are gobbled up by Google and its monopoly is increasing.
The web is anyway 90% google, in future the same may happen to Enterprise Space also.
You are ridiculous, google is not “90%” of the internet, it’s not even 10%. Just because you dont know how to use anything else doesn’t make your perceptions a reality.
Can totally see the value in real time database / search. Using the Twhirl search function is by far the most useful feature to pull Twitter data on anything you may need. Immensely powerful.
Follow me now @ http://twitter.com/IanMikutel
i just hope Ev and Biz can stay longer compared to when they sold Blogger to Google. It was like 5 months or so …
Yeah I agree, I hope that Ev and Biz would get the opportunity to drive some things at Google. The concern is that they decide to go start another project.
they were there a lot longer than 5 months IIRC
Louis,
The deal would make sense for several reasons. Google is lacking a live web component and twitter has the data for that. Google knows how to index, and could layer my experience from the live web… etc.
I would like to see twitter remain independent and actually find a smart way to partner with google to expose their data; no need to sell.
Google search results lag for content is about 15 minutes. Is going from 15 minutes to immediate worth 500 million or should Goog decrease the lag themselves internally?
200 million people on facebook updating several times a day about personally relevant details seems more interesting than getting spammed on Twitter by social media and MLM people who basically retweet and think they are contributing.
In ten years, Twitter clients won’t need Twitter.
You feel comfortable making a prediction for ten years from now? Do you actually work in tech?
Even if he does work in tech… go back in time 10 years and tell me we would be having this conversation right now (10 years from then) about a utility called “Twitter”. Then look at our faces when you explain (or try to) what this “Twitter” thing is and how/why we all use it. (Hint: they would be the same faces we see on the heads of our parents when we talk to them about Twitter today.)
So.. um.. yeah… I think it’s safe to say that anyone predicting 10 years out, whether they work in tech or not, is in the apprentice stage of prediction making, at best.
With that said… there probably won’t even be a “Twitter” in 10 years. It will become stagnate with complacency (see: Google) and it will be replaced by something far superior in the wake of that stagnation (see: Friendster).
“We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten.” – Bill Gates
Yes, I do wish that rumor is true. Because if that big G acquires Twitter it might change the Future of Twitter.
http://www.smartbloggerz.com
Ah, seems good news, if that’s not a rumor!
… I am happy unless it creates some chaos for the users!
Cheers!
I am interested in settling in the Twitter nest. I was wondering what you guys like about it?
Funny, my April fools blog post was that Google bought Twitter…
Read the fake press release…
http://www.advertisespace.com
not true. google is smarter than that.
Kara Swisher disagrees – http://kara.all...ogging-service/
I heard they were also interested in acquiring http://www.clasilistados.org but you never know… rumors.
Mike
What sense? Oh, you mean the monopolistic narcissistic sense! Sure it does. In the hands of its original creators Google was the best it could be, powerful, practical, and fair. In the hands of the wealthy moguls of the Smith type Google is dictatorial, beyond law, and pretentious. There are enormous breaches of copyright and privacy that Google didn’t have until it changed hands/ownership, and no democracy whatsoever. Try contacting a Google staffmember let alone their executives and hope that you get a reply some time in this century!
Your comments just make decent people puke with disgust.
wow
That is a pretty rumor. I’d be interested in seeing what google would do with twiter.
They’d remove all contacts, stomp all over your privacy, bombard you with ads and all sorts of money-making tidbits, and link you to all imaginable web pages including those of funeral directors. They’d intrude into evry pore of our lives. Not to mention hacking…
And to think they bought Jaiku 2 years ago…
http://www.tech...-startup-jaiku/
From the techcrunch article:
“Google’s ability to add scale and marketing muscle to Jaiku should be putting Twitter on the back-foot right now”
heh.
The service goes from cool to google jail
Jail is the word! If only all lawyers and judges weren’t for sale because Google matches any price.
If this is true and goes through its a huge win for Google and loss for MSFT/YHOO/AOL and others, including Facebook.
As Mike points out Twitter is becoming interesting for search, but it is at least as interesting as a social medium that is giving Facebook run for the money.
The power of Twitter is in its simplicity to connect, and lately, simple wins.
So I think that if Google gets Twitter it covers itself from the growing Facebook threat and has a shot of stearing social web its way.
Actually simple wins out everytime, hence K.I.S.S.
The majority of people using the web these days aren’t technically savvy and don’t have time to tinker with stuff. If it’s easy, fun, and gives them the ability to extend their 15 minutes of fame then they’ll do it.
Google will buy Twitter to make money period. They won’t buy it because it is cool, trendy, hype of the moment or it is social. They need to make money first or Twitter is useless. Facebook has much higher value than Twitter. Google will compete with Facebook for the money, not just because it want to lose the “social” market.
Facebook has value? What?
Google learned from Myspace that you can’t monetize a social network like you can search.
What value does Facebook have to Google?
How would you monetize Twitter if we put it another way. How is Twitter better than Facebook?
Facebook is a closed system, Twitter isn’t. Twitter will start taking users away from Facebook just as they’ve started to do to MySpace.
A Twitter purchase will be like the majority of other purchases that didn’t make money.
Google is showing signs of being the next Microsoft.
Buy a company, let it rot for a couple of years then kill it off.
HEY, wait a minute, what about Dodgeball?
I guess I am clueless. Though the best way to get rid of competitor is to buy them and then let them die a slow death and say it wasn’t a good business to begin with.
Twitter is just a FAD business anyway.
Blogster:
Do you really believe Twitter is a fad? So fads grow in popularity over a three year period? Twitter has just began to hit the mainstream. It’s crossing generations, grandparents are using now.
I don’t remember the mullet gaining that kind of following and increasing over such a long period. If that was the case we would all look like billy ray cyrus right now.
@Kevin
Its penetration into the mainstream has just happened. So while it may not be a fad in the bubble of the valley, it could certainly turn out to be a fad with the general public.
@Ryan
AMEN!
Ryan:
Apparently not the case given that wide adoption rate.
Exactly! Google has become the lowest most despicable money-hungry monster machine and as usual the fish stinks from its head. Yes, hope Mr Smith gets the expression!
Interesting (and logical) if true. I kind of hope it is, to be honest, there is a lot of good that can come out of a real time Google / Twitter search engine. I’m not going to say revolutionary, but the applications to real life work are exciting.
Makes alot of sense for Google to do this. Google leads in historical search, acquiring Twitter will ensure they also dominate the real time search market.
That’s actually a low valuation, Twitter is well worth $1 Billion and here’s why:
http://tomuse.c...ble-web-service
Unless Microsoft throws its hat in the ring, I doubt Google would pay $1 billion for it.
lets temp Microsoft to bid, then google will bid $1 billion for it.
just like facebook is worth 15 billion, right dude. 1. 98% of content created is crap 2. Because of the 140 charcters, and mass messages it becomes harder to filter the relevant from irrelevant.
you forgot put -
11. Can’t be monetized.
IRC, Usenet, Twitter
1 Billions?? It would be just a buzz I guest, interesting if we can get 1% of that.. hmm..
Interesting timing – reading this right after watching @biz on Colbert.
He even likened their business model to Google’s original approach: build value (network size) first, then the revenue will come.
Would make a lot of sense to tuck this into GOOG, but I really hope they’d do a better job than they initially did with the Blogger/Pyra acquisition. As a Blogger user since way back, it was painful to live through years of zero support and minimal feature/performance improvement before Google started to get serious.
As an aside, getting Rick Klau involved in the Blogger team was the best thing Google could possibly do with the thing. Finally seeing some serious and much longed-for improvements.
I concur, Google can’t sit back on this thing if they buy it. They will lose users big time. Plus it usually takes Google 1.5 years to open up the damn service again after purchasing it. Just look at JotSpot and GrandCentral.
Yes. Gotta trust they’d be smart enough not to do that this time. The momentum’s the thing right now with Twitter. Put one big block in the path of the rolling growth machine, and all the happy Twitterfolk will just route around it. Friendfeed, Identi.ca, lots of other places the conversation would just spill over to.
Wow, wonder what crazy changes Google would make to monetize Twitter!
Especially because google aren’t really experts at monetization. They’re still not really making money on youtube.
No one else is making money off online video.
uh, actually they are:
http://www.meta...oducer_rewards/
Yeah, what the heck does Google know about making money.
They’re, like, the only internet company not making money on ads right now.
Or do I have that wrong…
backtype.com is a better discovery tool because its results are from the web as a whole. most twibbers comments are worthless squeals. backtype produces the meat and potato comments of the web.
TalkLocator.com – twit yourself
First things first… We would go from “Twitter” to “Twitter – Beta”!
Twitter needs a big company to maintain their inconsistent uptime.
Uh, downtime hasn’t been much of a problem for Twitter for quite some time now.
What was that blog that quoted CEO of Google saying something like Twitter was a fad? Hmmm… I wonder who it was… TechCrutch was it? It’s on the tip of my tongue…
i think AOL should buy twitter. With tim coming to AOL and social platform..AOL can do magic with twitter
Where is AOL? What are they doing now? Even though we don’t even hear Microsoft a lot in these context, still they have their desktop products and OS to survive. What does AOL have? Bebo?
Whoa, honestly it would be great to see Twitter grow some more on its own accord. One of the simple beauties of Twitter was the organic growth the founders allowed, without the immediate obsession of defining their business model. Fascinating enough, it has been the users’ behavior that have pointed to the potential revenue streams and less, the finance gurus.
I disagree that “the value of twitter will only go up over time”. Look how Google has effectively squashed the last company they bought off of Ev, Blogger. They bungled the management of it after it became a google property and allowed space for competition to come in and grab the market that was more solely focused on the space.
I have to disagree with you Joe. I haven’t seen this kind of adoption from the mainstream media, celebrities, and everyone else in the world since MySpace and blogging. Furthermore, since it’s drop dead simple to use everyone can microblog.
I just posted a couple articles on my site that effectively explain why Twitter is so different and so powerful.
The value will go up and Google knows search and Twitter’s main strength is search as well as content creation.
Dear Kevin,
Holy shit are you annoying.
Sincerely,
Everyone
thank you
What’s really annoying is people that can’t have a civilized discussion.
It would be nice if you had a real point instead of quasi-trolling and hiding behind a fake name.
Bring some insight to the discussion instead of attempting to insult those that have a different point of view.
Er, I wouldn’t use MySpace as a successful use case.
Forget what-if Microsoft’s place in this. I wonder about Yahoo.
Wonder if they will keep the Fail Whale or if they can make it become extinct.
its Google that will keep growing and growing all the time… i seriously can’t think of Google going down a day,,, its unimaginable and apparently impossible
You said it and that’s why the Twitter community will be happy to hear Google is on board, hopefully
Because you said that it will probably happen soon.
That’s funny!
makes a lot of sense for Google…Separately, makes a lot of sense for Twitter–cash out while the gettin is good. And don’t end up like Facebook in that respect
Thought I just read an article about Newscorp wanting to snatch-up Twitter…. Alot of buzz but who’s gonna lay down the duckets?
@MatthewLoop
see update.
Noooo. We know what happened to Jaiku!
problem seems to be NOBODY knows what hapened to jaiku
Interested in seeing where this goes. Twitter could do quite well on its own, and they’re barely scratching the surface of what they can do (seems like they’re spending most of their time just trying to keep the ship afloat under all the demand these days… but maybe that’s where the big G can lend its help).
Where can I bet on the total Techcrunch Twitter articles per week?
Twitter is great – it keeps everyone in the Valley distracted from doing anything useful.
thanks for the laugh. if G bought twitter for 350 million just to appear hip and in the social game it would be worth it. G currently has no social presence.
orkut??
Nobody in North America cares about Orkut. Compare the number of hits in (an English-language search of) Google News:
Google: 169,332
Facebook: 62,281
Twitter: 53,410
Orkut: 1,013
See? Orkut is 2% as newsworthy as Twitter. Nobody is excited enough about Orkut for the press to take it seriously. When it comes to social networks, Twitter and Facebook have all the hype right now.
(Incidentally, the top Google News results for “Google,” “Twitter,” and “Facebook” are stories about this rumor. It’s the second result for “Orkut.”)
Which, in a roundabout way, brings up the biggest problem with Twitter being acquired by a company like Google or Microsoft: Google and Microsoft aren’t cool. Twitter may actually lose its hype-worthiness (and therefore see a decline in its growth rate) if it’s seen as just part of a larger corporation.
I totally agree with your last comment that it would be a shame to see Google buy Twitter. How many times have we seen big companies by smaller ones and they lose their luster. In the travel industry, one recent example was Yahoo buying metasearch engine FareChase. Yahoo bought it in 2004 and let it die a few weeks ago. Twitter is a different case, of course, because it has legs of its own. But, I would rather see it stay independent and thrive.
And once Google’s SRE team got a hold of it, it might actually hold up in a strong breeze.
wow that may cause a lot of users to jump ship
No way, if anything it would help since once Twitter is driven by Google patented servers the fail whale will be extinct.
Probably or it might slow down new account registration.
Yeah definitely! Yet another process of integrating accounts!
I don’t wish Twitter to be bought up by Google, at least not yet. Twitter should be left alone for now … let it spread its wings more and let it enjoy the flight.
I was thinking something similar. I know a few people that would leave simply because it’s Google.
Wowee – big news, Michael. Thanks for the inside scoop. I wonder if Twitter will become Twoogle?! J/K.
I’m with you on wanting to see Twitter, as is, spread their wings a bit further before big brother takes over.
Mind you, YouTube is doing just super.
And you’re right on about the power of the search. I often refer to Twitter as my “Living breathing search engine.”
twoogle is coming. Will make google and twittle seem so yesterday. Interested parties and programmers, feel free to contact me.
If Microsoft bought Twitter they would ruin it and it would turn off a lot of Twitter users. Please don’t suggest that Msft buys Twitter #thatwouldsuck. It’s Google, not Goolge
Huge news and one that would make Google into a HUGE communications powerhouse.
Surprised though with Twitter’s recent mention of monetizing through a premium service. I would’ve loved to see how they’d do w/o this possible acquisition.
Google’s real desire was simultaneous real-time indexing of the web. Looks as though Twitter beat them to it. Twitter shows breaking news faster than Google Trends, so the desire to acquire makes sense to a search company… er I mean ad network.
I mean who really cares about Twitter search? What would people be querying in Twitter search? Why would people want to query limited set of database over Google even if Twitter indexes twitter users’ posts faster? I just don’t get it.
James, people aren’t going to use Twitter search the same way they use Google. Plus you can’t Google “does anyone know of a great web designer” and receive real time communication or be contacted by designers immediately. That’s what Twitter search is all about.
Huh? Twitter isn’t a real time indexing of the web. Its a real time indexing of its own website. What’s newsworthy about that?
So let me get this straight….
Doug Bowman leaves Google for Twitter; Twitter gets acquired by Google; Doug makes a ton of money and returns home to Google all in less than 30 days! Is that what you are saying Mike?
WTF? How can some people be so lucky?
Funny enough, Doug Bowman was the first person that came to my mind when I saw this too. Tangential, but interesting. I was/am really looking forward to what he would do with Twitter.
If the rumors are true then it’s a smart move on the part of Google and on Twitter since they’ve been positioning themselves in the search space.
I even think the little tiny ads on the Twitter web page are its way of smirking at Google….”yeah, we can do little ads as well big boy.”
“cash and/or publicly valued stock, which is equivalent to cash”
It’s only equivalent if the stock isn’t restricted. GOOG’s lost 17% of its value in the past 12 months, and the stock market isn’t exactly stable at the moment.
Yeah, but it will come back easy
If we really knew the stock would rebound, that fact would already be reflected in the price. Stocks, even GOOG, keep going higher until they don’t.
It’s not going to come back overnight, but it will come back
@ Kevin: It will come back? Okay, mortgage your house on some GOOG calls and then retire. Oh, wait, it’s not that simple, is it? Gee, it was at 750 and may never get there again–or does it have to b/c you say so?
david:
Most of the stocks took a dive because of the financial crisis. Markets rebound, that’s how it works. If that were not true, we would still be in the great depression.
There was also talk of Google looking at R8YourPolitician
They have a UK site, an Irish site and a .TV site at the mintue and from their case study I found on epractice.eu its a global brand every democratic country.
With Viacom snaching up RateYourProfessor , this new E-Democracy web platforms seems like a smart move because Politics is hot and it targets all people in the electorate
A Google real time search engine?
This is the question of hardware so forget it
Last minute! Twitter = human powered collaborative spider that indexes and organizes real-time physical and virtual space. Much more powerful than Google – just compare greasemonkey mash up twitter search VS google. In 50% of the cases twitter search comes across as more relevant. No wonder than if Twitter Search surpassed Google blog search in less than 8 months – from scratch (and Google blog search was BIG – killed Technorati).
Is it just me or is Google getting more and more scary everyday? I’m not too shocked they are making a run for Twitter. The site is growing at an insane rate and is pretty automated. That has always been the best bait for a Google buy out.
Frankly, I’m surprised Google is acquiring anything.
If it is true, it will be just one more great service ruined by poorly targeted ads on every available square pixel.
“Poorly targeted ads” might be the key.
GooG is going to change the way how it chooses the ads starting very soon.
Knowing “behaviorial pattern” up to the last tweet may be a huge wining point. Assuming you need to be looged in GooG account permanently or at least while you are tweeting.
I’ve been saying this for months, initially for the simple reason that Twitter needed help scaling up to the ever-increasing loads with a partner that is expert at these kinds of issues, as well as things like pre-existing integration with Google IM (which was taken out because of the load/stability issues), etc.
Now that Twitter Search has emerged as one of the killer apps pertaining to Twitter, it becomes even more relevant: You may have noticed that Twitter Search would at certain heavy-load times of the day allow search results to only go back 7 days. Which could become really frustrating when trying to easily retrieve older tweets.
With full backwards range, Twitter Search can become e.g. one’s primary bookmarking tool, since the Tweets are embedding tons of tag-like markers with the links, if not outright #hashtags, to create context more naturally/with less effort than other (social or not) bookmarking solutions.
But to make this viable/trustworthy, full backwards queriability has to be maintained (at an absolute minimum of one’s own tweets). So having search on a industrial-strength footing like Google can obviously provide is massively important.
Now obviously Google wants their hands on the real-time search aspects, and thankfully ultimately likely wouldn’t have to try quite as frantically to monetize Twitter, as long as the acquisition can preempt competitors. I was getting a little worried that Twitter might have to sell too much of its soul to e.g. corporate data miners, which could have proven another reason to cut off search past 7 days back.
Interestingly, if Microsoft doesn’t preempt this deal, they are missing out on maybe their last chance to disrupt Google in search. Of course there may be just too many barriers to the acquisition, as MSFT would likely want to move Twitter’s infrastructure to Windows servers, asf. which would likely be a disaster.
And would have a heck of a time explaining an acquisition to their already “not-amused” (by the Micro-hoo saga) stockholders.
Twitter probably sees the writing on the wall. It didn’t take facebook long to put up some Twitter like features once their advance was spurned. Google is slowly assembling the parts for a giant social network of its own, it wouldn’t take Google long to include it’s own Twitter like features. What Twitter has now that Google needs is the real time search.
I’d say what Twitter has now that Google needs (and never got to with Jaiku) is buzz, mainstreaming, and resultant (hyper-)active userbase. “Real-time search” is only useful as long as enough people participate to create the real-time content.
Agreed. I was thinking that ‘real time search’ requires a floor of an active userbase. The question is has Twitter reached that level. (My answer: Yes)
GOOGLE SUCKS! Twitter, you don’t need Google… THEY need YOU!
Don’t be evil!
google sucks? what world are you living, dude?
I’m living in the world of reality. You are entitled to live in a fantasy world if that floats your boat.
I don’t think it’s true, or if anything is happening, it’s a ploy on Twitter’s part. Google doesn’t need Twitter, they can roll out “Google Chirps”, the same way Google Blogsearch killed Technorati.
The real target here is Yahoo or Microsoft. This is Twitter’s VC’s dangling bait, saying “Google might get us! So you, Yahoo or Microsoft, should act NOW, or you’ll regret it!”.
Of course, Techcrunch is part of the “ecosystem” here too.
i agree, its all BS publicity hype. Why would google pay over 250M for 6M users and a search they can mock up prob in 30 days.
Have you not been paying attention to the media and the adoption rate of twitter?
Check out the stats on compete.com, their taking off and everyone is moving to Twitter.
It’s well worth over 250M easy.
No, “everyone” isn’t moving to Twitter – the social media crew is, because it was optimized for a small number of big egos. And it’s now at a high point of a hype cycle. Plus Twitter has huge problems with SMS costs. VC money can cover a multitude of business model flaws for a time, but not forever.
if u call a search based on people dumb comments, then WOW…the sources of twitter are unreliable
Example: lets say I wan to learn about “batman”, WTF do i get a bunch of useless posts (”tweets”) that tell me nothing: http://search.t...search?q=batman
NEVER MIND school research, or any usefull information. ITs for losers who have nothing to do but look up peoples useless posts. Sorry bud, twitter will never be a google, NOT sure why they would want to buy a bunch of posts linked into a search???
if google buys it I HOPE they drop it into the deadpool pile on purpose, so this brutal useless hype can be over. Random dumb status posts called “search” is just ridicules, If thats what people call innovation and the next biggest search engine, then we are getting more primitive as web 3.0 approaches.
Seth:
Grandmas are on Twitter and I don’t know that many grandmas who are interested in social media.
brr:
You’re missing it. It’s not for search in the sense that you think. It’s search for businesses to find users and potential customers.
kevin, could you give me few exemples of twitter-searches that can produce something useful? I think I don’t get it.
Well, http://search.t...ch?q=earthquake is a pretty good one. Live notifications of earthquakes immediately after they happen, way before any news outlet can post a story.
Suffice to say, if you’re doing research for a school project on your favourite TV character, then check out wikipedia. If you’re looking for completely new information about world events or to track trends about a brand then it can be invaluable. (Try searching for say, Coca Cola or McDonalds and marketers could get a lot of info about what makes people go for their product.)
Thank you Xander, it’s nice to hear that other people understand the value in this. I’m sure most of the people that are so negative about Twitter just haven’t used it to it’s full extent. I thought the same way until I started using the search engine there and that’s where you can begin seeing it’s usefulness.
Google could easily incorporate what they’ve built for status updates from GMail into the Google toolbar, and they’d have something really similar to Twitter. You can even see the makings of this with Blogger’s new “Follower” feature.
Buy Twitter? There really aren’t any cost or revenue synergies to speak of and barriers to entry for Google are so low…why spend $500M?
they are not buying a concept or a technology,
they are buying users along with their content.
Buying users? I’d bet that 99% of Twitter users are already Google users–
Content? The content is easy to create and is just a function of time.
Squelching innovate competitors is really the only rationale for a buyout.
I *really* hope that Microsoft buys twitter. It would seriously shake up the search world and could actually make the MS search engine relevant once again, and also put a edge to it that google wouldnt be able to match
I second that!
Yep!
I third that!
LOL…I’m sure people think that if MSFT buys twitter GOOGLE wont be able to catch up…LOL twitter is a bunch of posts made by people which are sorted by a timestamp NOT relevancy. Google or Microsoft could gather all the posts from their sites they currently own, and create a twitter in 10 days and put twat into shame.
Twitter search is not really a innovative product, its a search which is based on dumb comments such as “i like to eat burgers”, “I like to tan”, “I’m at work, and i hate my boss” and people call that the next biggest real time search…WOW, SORRY but no! I cant find sh!t on that search BUT some dumb posts that contain my keywords, its more a waste of time then anything.
Twat will never be the next Facebook or Myspace with one dumb service called status and a staus search by timestamp.
Twitter search is nifty…but if you don’t live in the US getting regional relevant info is near impossible.
At the moment.
I would expect Google to buy and kill it/chop it up. Their behavior is becoming more Microsoft-like all the time.
It’s easier to squash a threat to your ecosystem by buying it and dropping it into obscurity, problem solved.
Didn’t Google already buy Jaiku? Why do they need Twitter? I guess Google has so much money they don’t know what to do with it all.
I think the main thing we all need to hope for is that Twitter will stay the same in terms of its function. If this happens, the necessity of using Twitter for marketing purposes is going to grow exponentially. This is a really great strategic purchase for Google, especially if they are still concerned with being the most current and relevant source for content (although Social Bookmarking sites like Digg still provide great fresh content)
Exactly, very great move indeed. They need to keep all Twitter personnel on the job there and keep things running smooth. Now is a very crucial time for Twitter since it is growing so rapidly.
Let’s face it someone is going to buy Twitter. Whether is good for Twitter and the Twitter tribe, only time will tell. Regardless, it makes a hell of a lot of sense for Google. Real time search is incredibly powerful and a natural brand extension for Google. Moreover, Google has the resources to maximize the latent potential hidden in twitter and doesn’t need to monetize it prematurely.
You said it Andrew, I don’t think most people understand Twitter and that’s why no one initially saw the real value there. But it’s taken off with everyone adopting it from the president, celebrities, etc.
Kevin,
When you say: “It’s search for businesses to find users and potential customers”
It sounds to me like spamming users.
Correct me if Im wrong…
No, only if the user is NOT asking for help.
Yeah twitter is the new myspace.
How do you figure that?
The real value is evident now as Twitter has become an impressive tool for breaking news and mainstream media and celebrities are seeing the value!
Right on Joe. That’s one of it’s biggest assets. But I think it’s ability to generate content is just as if not more important. Just look at Wikipedia and how strong it is on SERPS. Albeit it’s not necessarily a fair comparison, many of Twitter’s users’ profiles are ranking in the #1 spot for their name and that’s pretty powerful.
Totally Andrew. Real-time search is definitely the next wave and no wonder Google is interested in Twitter. It makes a lot of sense. I would say, Google should also focus on companies like http://www.boilingpage.com, one of the best real-time search engines I’ve seen that essentially creates value out of twitter.
JUST BREEZING THRU SHOWING SOME LOVE GOD BLESS YOUR BOY KHA
http://WWW.MYSP...M/FULLYFOCUSENT