Companies buying Twitter: Enough already!
The rumors just keep getting more and more absurd: Now Apple wants to buy Twitter, according to the blog gossip mill.
Guess what! Google is going to buy Twitter! No, Facebook's going to buy it! Or Yahoo--oh, wait, they can't afford it anymore. The latest and most absurd rumor, floated by Valleywag, suggests that Apple has been looking at buying Twitter, too.
Yes, Apple. It's a hardware company that really only markets and hypes up software as a means to sell more hardware--like how iTunes really exists to sell iPods--and yet apparently it wants to buy Twitter. I'm not sure Twitter could convince me to buy any hardware, except maybe a water balloon to carry around in the hopes that maybe I could lob it at annoyingly Twitter-happy Ashton Kutcher.
You know what? If I had $500 million in cash lying around, I'd look into buying Twitter, too. I'd also buy a flying car. Twitter happens to be, oh, the hottest start-up in the digital-media business right now, so it'd probably be a good investment. But it's also buzzworthy as a form of communication and news delivery--and with the iPhone, it's completely understandable that Apple would be interested in this sort of property. A BusinessWeek report highlights this: Twitter apps are hot on the iPhone, it'd be a cheap buy for Apple--so why not? It ends on a rather smart note, that perhaps Apple ought to invest in Twitter, not buy it.
Why does this sound so familiar? Maybe because we've heard it all before. Two years ago, Google and Microsoft and Yahoo and News Corp. and probably several Abu Dhabi oil billionaires were reportedly in the running to buy Digg, back when it was on the top of Silicon Valley's start-up heap. It was almost a done deal. And again. And again. And none of that has happened yet.
Somebody will probably buy Twitter eventually, unless it manages to come up with a magic-pixie-dust secret sauce business model that blows everyone's minds and it files for a phenomenally successful initial public offering and it totally single-handedly ends the recession and saves Silicon Valley and the world and yaaaaaay! But until that bright and sparkling day, let's stop getting all totally worked up whenever an executive from some huge tech powerhouse is spotted walking into Twitter's office's front door. Maybe they were just there to play foosball.
This is all giving me a headache. And I don't think you want me Twittering that I have a headache again.