Apple mulls over investment in Twitter Apple has reportedly held talks with Twitter over the last few months in a move that could lead to a multi-million dollar strategic investment by Cupertino in the micro-blogging website. As noted by the New York Times, which cited people familiar with the discussions, Apple has failed to make a success out of its attempts at …
Thoroughly agree. Apple need to lay their mitts OFF, lest they bugger up something successfully that works with ALL platforms. Twitters success lies in the fact that it allows everyone, regardless of platform, to access its services. I can see, if Apple muscles in on this, that the platform availability would suddenly dwindle to one (iOS based only), and that all your personal data would suddenly 'belong' to Apple. Granted, this is a worst-case scenario, but the signs are all there: You just have to look with clear glasses.
I thought this had been largely debunked as being "old news":
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443343704577553953443264394.html
http://www.theverge.com/apple/2012/7/28/3198148/dont-believe-the-apple-invests-in-twitter-hype
http://allthingsd.com/20120728/neverland-no-twapple-and-no-twoogle-or-facetwit-for-now-but-happy-thoughts/
Twitter isn't worth $10 billion.
To work out the true value of a business, take the actual capital value of its real assets (in Twitter's case, not very much), and add on an amount based on the likely return on investment over a reasonable time. Twitter are hoping that they may manage to get income up to $1 billion in a couple of years time (NB that's income, not profit). As Twitter is unlikely to be around in 10 years time, then it needs to generate *profits* of a couple of billion a year to justify a valuation of $10 billion - oooh, look, did anyone see that pig fly over?
Perhaps a few hundred million as a fair valuation?
Do Twitter actually need investment? What for?
Also, if a company like Apple is taking large stakes in something like Twitter, I would have thought that could be rather damaging to Twitter, they'll probably loose all the use by companies like the BBC and commercial TV stations may start to demand payments for operating hash tags for particular programs.
I'm not a twitterer, but I'd say they were better off keeping the likes of Apple, MS, Google well out of their company.
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