Twitter The interwebs have been abuzz with rumours Google is in "late-stage" talks with Twitter over a possible buy-out of the micro-blogging site, but the original source of the story has already played down the prospect of an early deal. Michael Arrington at TechCrunch "broke" the initial story last night, in which he cited several …
"They are taking on yet another web2 service that has a broken business model and will loose them money left right and centre."
My thoughts exactly, my biggest problemm is the fact that a lot of business clients want to jump on these bandwagons as another communication channel with their audience but becuase they are free they think I'm being paraniod when I tell them they should have a back up in case there comes a time when the service is suddenly yanked, without paying a fee for teh service there is no service level agreement that can be enforced.
'They are taking on yet another web2 service that has a broken business model and will loose them money left right and centre.'
I think you might have hit on something there. If Google buy enough loss making services they might be able to say they aren't a monopoly - because if they were they'd be rich like Microsoft.
In which case I'd like to talk to the Mountain View boffins about my virtual 'notes to the milkman' Web 2.0 synergetic holistic mashup enterprise. People pay nothing to write notes to a non-existent milkman in 140 characters or fewer, they can follow their favourite milkman and share favourite notes with other milk drinkers. It makes no money, is completely pointless, will be forgotten in six months time; so by Twitter reckoning, must be worth at least a billion. Two billion if we can make it an iPhone app and get Stephen Fry onboard.
Maybe some sort of milmanview could be made? Stick a camera into the head of every milkman and record everything it sees. That way people with nothing better to do can watch it (and maybe see some of AC's virtual housewives) on teh Internet and Google can make (no) profit (at all).
There is definately an iphone app in it too...
There's gotta be an opportunity for 'synergies' with StreetView, surely.
Perhaps EA might want to pay for the licence and create a game in the vein of a GTA/Paperboy mashup.
And with all this milk sloshing around, there's bound to be the inevitable bunch of pun-ariffic porno rip-offs.
Twitter, free standing, is just a big money pit with no real business model.
Twitter coupled with other Google services could make more sense. For instance, by watching what you tweet could serve you ads next time you use the www.
But of course it all comes down to branding and owning eyeballs. Twitter has no patents etc and has little longterm traction. Google could easily replicate twitter functionality and probably gets little benefit from buying twitter.
Of course doing this would get Google some negative points from the Twittards. Far better PR to wait until Twitter dies of natural causes (no more money), then be seen as saints for providing an alternative service for twitter junkies.
...I seem to recall a certain online encyclopaedia which doesn't make any net profit...
All they'd need do would be to make everyone automatically follow something like @twitter, and remind people a few times a year that the service needs users' donations to survive. If it works for WP, it could possibly do so for Twitter...
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