Should Google or Facebook buy Twitter?
Posted on 10. Apr, 2008 by Theo in News
My relationship with Twitter sounds like that of so many other Twitter users: “Everybody was raving about Twitter so I decided to give it a go, but I couldn’t see any value in it so I stopped using it. Then, several weeks/months later I decided to give it another go and then got hooked.”
Sure, I’ll admit I am semi-hooked on Twitter. Which, of course, got me thinking; Where does Twitter fit in the webscape? How does Twitter plan to make money? Or have businesses these days, formally rejected the notion that revenue and profitability is one of the goals of a company?
And that’s when I started putting two and two together.
Twitter is perfectly positioned to sell the most targeted ads possible. You tell them what you are doing exactly when you are doing it. Let’s say you twit “I am getting hungry” and automatically a link to a delivery restaurant in your area appears. Or maybe you twit “I am planning my ski vacation”. Well, there’s a million ads that could be served there, ranging from travel agencies, to ski resorts, to ski shops, to… you name it.
The core of Twitter is answering the question of “What are you doing?”, while answering the same question is a very prominent feature in Facebook. The two differ in how they distribute the data you give them. If Facebook bought Twitter, Facebook would be opening up a little, but at the same time it would be reaching more people for a longer time. Combining that with the data it already has from peoples profiles, it could, theoretically, serve extremely targeted ads.
But Facebook is probably too focused on its own thing to bother with trying to figure out how to integrate Twitter. So how about Google?
Google is probably the master in delivering content relevant ads, it has the advertiser base in place, and with some tweaking it can make Twitter ads happen. It really is no different than placing ads to anything else online, be it a blog, a RSS feed or a search.
Ok, this is how far I went with those thoughts. No need to go further at this time. We’ll wait and see what happens.