We’ve heard an unconfirmed rumor that conversations are taking place between Twitter and Twitter-focused app marketplace oneforty. This is PURELY speculative and it’s unclear if talks are about a possible acquisition or a partnership. But if Twitter is thinking about going on a shopping spree, why would it consider oneforty?
OneForty recently launched its marketplace to fill a gap in the Twittosphere: an App Store for all things Twitter. The site lists over 1300 free and paid applications and services built on Twitter’s API, where people can search for, rate and buy Twitter services. The site also features lists of the most popular apps on the marketplace, and lists the “best” app for nine types of Twitter services, such as apps for business, url shortners, image sharing, news, and travel. And the site hopes to be somewhat of a social network, with users having the ability to create profiles of their favorite Twitter apps and services.
It makes sense for Twitter to acquire oneforty for a couple of reasons. First, Twitter just raised a boatload of money, so we all know that the microblogging network isn’t too strapped for cash. When the news broke of Twitter’s $100 million infusion, there was a ton of speculation about what the money would be used for and of course, acquisitions were at the top of the list. Twitter remained mum as to how the funds will be used but clearly, a portion of that ginormous amount of cash could be used towards acquiring Twitter-related applications like Bit.ly or oneforty.
And Twitter may not want to reinvent the wheel when it comes to developing their own app store. oneforty’s site is compelling because it provides a service to Twitter users that isn’t out there yet. And oneforty’s social component of listing your favorite apps and sharing those apps with friends could be integrated into Twitter users’ profiles.
And of course, a Twitter app store would also be a way to engage and help out the thousands of developers who are building applications and sites off of Twitter’s API. While Twitter currently lists some applications and also has a wiki-based directory of Twitter-related sites and apps, but the directory’s layout layout isn’t easy to navigate and has a cluttered interface.
Oneforty also has a defined business model, which could be a possible revenue stream for Twitter. The way oneforty makes money is fairly basic. If you want to download Tweetie’s iPhone app, oneforty provides an link directly to Apple’s App Store, allowing oneforty to collect an affiliate fee. Of course for the free downloads and sites, such as TwitPic or TweetDeck, oneforty will just direct you to their sites, where you can download or access the application. oneforty also lists Twitter-related books and paraphanalia, with affiliate links to Amazon.com. Laura Finton, oneforty’s founder, told me recently that oneforty would eventually become a full-fledged e-commerce platform, where developers can sell their apps on the site itself.
We contacted Fitton to confirm our deny the rumors of talks with Twitter. She said that oneforty would “presumably that would be a great fit” with Twitter but gave us a “no comment” on whether talks were taking place with the microblogging network about an acquisition.
Ofcourse they shouldn’t. Come on, it’s so easy to make themselves, why waste money on this? It’s not like oneforty has a community of users that twitter hasn’t got.
I totally agree with Wesley. I don’t see any sepcial reasons to buy oneforty.
I concur. I think Twitter’s done buying features (e.g. search). They’ll likely copy this like they did the retweet function and pass on a TweetMeme buy, oneforty buy, or any other great service that expands upon Twitter’s core features. They can develop these things in-house and save the dough.
from what i have seen most of twitter’s acquisitions seem to be talent related to filled their engineering positions . they buy for talent .
They should be buying stocks and bonds since they do not have a revenue stream.
Very true.
Oneforty is just a one hit wonder type of site.
Twitter can easily create one and It might just take a week to create one. Trust me, pretty soon, there will be 10 other oneforty clones that will provide better features. But the best one will always be the app from the native site.
But then again that is not what Twitter’s focus is.
One thing I will disagree though. There is not much talent involved in making the oneforty type of sites. It is just the concept that makes it unique.
Just leave oneforty for 2-3 months, people will forget it and move to the next one, just like thousands of twitter apps that was created a year ago.
wow! Amazing! What a super dooper hit! A startup just launched and about to be acquired by twitter!!!!
Simply brilliant!
I think another great idea for a Twitter acquisition would be a spam filter (for Tweets and Followers)
they can buy it, it is time they do like apple and bring a real cash flow.. day after day…. (or they can simply build their own stuff)
However they should upgrade the user experirence.. time to bring a real filter system…..
Seems like the question should be based on whether or not Twitter had already been planning an “App Store” or whatever you want to call it. If so, do not waste funds on acquiring, unless the price is equal to or less than their own development/launch costs. If they were caught by surprise, then fine, go ahead and buy Laura. Good for her!
For the record I happen to like both OneForty and Laura. The only question in a potential acquisition by Twitter is price. OneForty probably isn’t worth more than $1M – $2M to Twitter right now and at that price the oneforty investors would probably prefer to go it alone for now. Except of course if they thought Twitter will eventually build it’s own app directory/store, which it could easily do for less than $1M.
Personally I think they’d both be happy if a deal could be done in the $2MM range. OneForty gets a quick exit and Twitter gets their app store. Twitter I’m sure would prefer the deal done in Twitter common. Would be a great flip for Laura!
I hope you aren’t serious. I’m guessing you must be related to the owners of OneForty.
OneForty might be worth 10k-15k, and that is about it. If twitter pays $2million for something that takes about two weeks of work for an engineer, a graphic designer, and a data collector, they are insane.
If twitter does buy them, it would be for the talent, not the product. Likely a 100k or less purchase with a employment contract. The site itself is fairly basic and could likely be developed in a week or so.
But hey, even bit.ly got a 8mm valuation so its hard to make heads from tails now.
Just wanted to add that the above comment shouldn’t be seen as a negative. Even if a site isnt the most complicated to build it still has value. Oneforty saw a need for a twitter app market and they built it- And they did a great job. I was mainly just commenting that internet valuations in general are crazy.
Imagine trying to sell a brick and mortar business with no assets, revenue or history for bit.ly valuation levels. Its certainly very uncommon.
No. They should not.
By the way, IMHO, oneforty doesn’t seem to be acquired.
It makes sense to get acquired now. Twitter holds all the power and can either go to another appstore company, or do it themselves. they have a lock on the platform and there is no technology behind the service, so it is pure marketing. For this reason, Onefortys bargaining position might decrease over time rather than increase if they don’t have help from Twitter. Pistachio is a great presenter (she coached executives) so would be a great evangelist to the mainstream users coming online now.
Yes, the should!
If Twitter buys oneforty for $2M we are truly in bubble 2.0.
Apologies if I’m missing something but it seems to be a fairly basic directory site?
So everyone really IS making money besides Twitter.
Haha Yeah. Buying oneforty would help them monetize their API and application platform.
Is the challenge in finding 3rd party apps very high on twitter’s to do list these days? I see twitter’s challenges in user support and scaling and search and groups and spam and many many other areas. I don’t see many people complaining about how hard it is to find twitter apps. I just don’t see this as a pressing issue that twitter needs to solve anytime soon.
All that said… Twitter just raised money at a $1B valuation, if they buy companies for stock at that valuation it won’t be very dilutive.
BORN IN THE STREETS GRAFFITI o Fondation Cartier pour l’art contemporain o fondation.cartier.com
I’m sorry but articles as ridiculous as this make me wonder if techcrunch are selling posts. I mean after all it is at best a slightly different slant on a hundred app directorys out there.
FYI I had been told by someone at twitter 4 months ago that they were building their own app store already. So buying this would be a waste of time and $.
My guess is they will announce their own app store in november or december. then poof there goes OneForty
disclosure: I am a twitter app developer.
a better question: should twitter buy co-tweet?
because co-tweet only does one small thing, that only a very small percentage of twitter users use. Check their traffic you will understand.
Now, someone please tell me why Twitter cannot build its own AppStore and should buy a fairly basic site like oneforty.com? (nothing against oneforty.com and actually think that they were ‘spot-on’ in filling up the need and therefore their success and therefore this conversation!)
But seriously Twitter should build its own AppStore and find better acquisition targets, spend more R&D budget around real-time search (like Wowd.com) and build up a solid business model.
Twitter: the world thinks the world of you – but you should have your feet firmly on the ground!
you’re kidding right? an overnight software install listing apps the run twitter and it’s an acquisition target? for what, like 40 to 80 dollars? i am con-fuze-ed…
One thing that we’re taking for granted in minimizing the value of a potential oneforty acquisition is the thing that Twitter’s management and developers have less of than money at this point, and that is time.
The easy turnkey acquisition of oneforty is simplicity itself and probably $1.5 mm MAX price which is cheap if you look at the opportunity cost of building it themselves as well as the internal cost which would likely be more than you would believe. They have more critical issues to fry, like finding and implementing their monetization strategy and commercializing the Twitter platform. Also, if you look at the lack of basic strategic concerns like a less than great user experience, lack of spam filters, and platform stability and security problems you start to get the picture.
The other side of waiting to buy oneforty also is that as the company with first mover advantage, if it gains enough returning, committed users it may make rolling their own redundant and the price may be more expensive to buy later than sooner for that reason. I’d reckon that if they go 1/2 cash and 1/2 stock at the $1b val, that it’s cheap, easy and would integrate very quickly, just like their search firm acquisition last year.
For a lot of the above reasons I’d also rec they buy Tweetdeck to keep more control over traffic and get a fantastic ux at the same swipe before Tdeck gets expensive.
A good reason to buy oneforty is to make it so that the twitter apps are known — If I were twitter, I would make a twitter exchange of my own and show off all twitter apps out there. They should even show off hummingbird
A good way to make it so that the twitter apps are known ?
Build one. Takes a week and with 2 developers working at $100 an hour, it will only cost Twitter less than $10,000.
Miles – you’re right, with such a huge number of strategic problems: a high percentage of twitter quitters, silent majority of lurkers & low and non tweeters and intense concentration of content from a minority of contributors(10% generate 90% of tweets), their current valuation of $1B I’m sure is relying on fixing some of these problems and creating a richer user experience and retaining more realistic % of users as well as involving the “silent ones” in some way.
One way to do that is provide a more useful platform that provides a better value proposition to its users. The money that they spent on search is more than multiplied under the Twitter brand. Search is now a key tool for the platform. Oneforty or a homegrown version will I think be a great way to organize the apps for more utility for the masses to get more out of Twitter and increase retention.
Twitter certainly would be in a better position to leverage monetization of this webstore than oneforty would alone. This multiplier alone is worth considering seriously the purchase of oneforty.
As another point, it took OneForty almost 9 months and over $250,000 invested as well as pretty much full time investment from oneforty management (Laura Fitton and her team) as well as guidance from a number of mentors like Techstars/Kawasaki etc.
Agree w/many above. What are we missing here?
Geez, I could set up a Oneforty clone (it is just a directory), come up with a pretty logo, get Techcrunch to write about it, then a week later sell it?
Twitter Execs have the great benefit of hindsight and review of failures past. They have cash on hand. Sorry “Oneforty” you have no traction or substance, Twitter could put the same thing together in an afternoon.
If Twitter buy Oneforty it will indicate the beginning of the end. It will demonstrate that Management don’t have a clue.
Twitter need to figure out a better UX to allow Users to come and go from the Noise easily. And, the most obvious app will eventually emerge: conversation (not threaded kludgy stuff).
OneForty.com is far from a valuable site at the moment. Of the 1300+ applications they have, many of them have nothing at all to do with Twitter. It seems their approval process is quite minimal to get a listing into their system…leaving legitimate applications mixed in with absolute garbage.
I would think that Twitter would see past the poor management that OneForty.com is clearly displaying in their opening weeks.
And as many have said, a site like this can be put together in a couple of weeks…one that has real value to the community of Twitter Tool users…unlike what OneForty.com currently represents.