This is very partial reporting. The TechCrunch article went out of its way to point out that the rumours didn't check out with other sources.

So, effectively, despite the otherwise reputable source, it seems to me that this article is just echoing the same rumour around without adding anything to the discussion...

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/05/05/twitter-mania-google-go...

Where else in the world will you hear about $700M acquisitions of a company that is generating no revenue?

So at best they're buying the brand - which is still nothing near household, and I would argue worth a lot less than the quoted price tag.

But seriously, if the company is making no revenue, that sum is just for the user base. So how much does that make the value of every user? (does anyone have a current user count for twitter? I could only find figures from February but I imagine its much higher now.)

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=592438

Does Twitter have some IP protection preventing somebody coming along and doing it again? If not, I can't see Apple buying a brand-name.

Regarding your comment about IP, I doubt they do have any kind of protection, I mean their technology is trivial at best. But the value of Twitter lies within it's user base and adoption level, that momentum is hard to beat.

I am not a big fan of Twitter or Apple, but I can definitely see a interesting potential with the two combined (imagine integrated twitter in ipod and other wireless devices). iTweet?

There are already good Twitter applications for both the Mac and the iPhone. Apple gains nothing, and loses $700 million.

I mean, when is Valleywag going to stop printing variations of the "X is in late stage talks to buy Twitter" story?

When they cease to generate links, buzz, and pageviews.

I note that this story is currently #1 on a social news site for fairly discerning people...

Once this happens they can identify news events in real-time. A surge in tweets from a local area dynamically creates news stories. Accident on the 101? I get photos and video within minutes. The ultimate glocalized news service.

Apple ran over top of the established music industry and they are about to do it the news too.

If this goes through go crazy on AAPL.

Editors are valuable. Gaining a five minute head start on news is next to worthless, and the signal to noise ratio will make it far worse than just signing up for breaking news text messages from an actual news source. How many people even sign up for those now?

If 140 character messages from random geeks off the street ever supplant other news sources, I will eat my phone.

After all these years of spam filter development, I still get spam regularly. I don't think there's a way to deliver news from Twitter to people in real time with more accuracy than spam filters, and that would be annoying. Again, I don't think that many people use the breaking news text messaging services that already exist and are curated by human beings.

The Twitter messages and pictures when the plane landed in the Hudson River were awesome. I didn't care that I only saw them hours after the fact. I don't think anyone else cared either. It might have been nice to get them in real time, but not at the cost of noise. Noise is impossible to reduce to a manageable level when you're text messaging people because it interrupts whatever they're doing. You could send emails instead, but then you either are still interrupting people who check their email constantly, or you're losing the real time aspect.

One possibility is that this would contribute towards Apple's latest moves to position itself as more of lifestyle company as opposed to a hardware/computer company. Twitter would really strengthen them in that sense, since it's so highly visible right now.

I don't understand these "acquisitions" from a business perspective other than as an excuse to legally shuffle money from a big company to mutual investors and executives. Am I missing something?

Having said that... this all feels like a really lame April Fool's joke. Am I alone here?

No tangible goods. What to profit on? Secret business plan that earns money from every one of their clients' eyeballs? Statement is vacuous.

Apple does NOT need twitter.

This is a fake story to put a reference value for twitter in our heads.

In my opinion, twitter is not worth more than 100M.