back to article Google and Facebook named as Twitter suitors

Google and Facebook have emerged as possible buyers of Twitter, according to the Wall Street Journal. The newspaper says insiders had told the journal that as well as the ad giant and the user-data sales house, “other companies” have discussed a Twitter takeover. The WSJ reports that Twitter is seeking as much as $10bn in the …

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  1. RJ

    Oh bloody hell

    A pick between Mephisto and Beezebub...

    Surely there will be some anti-trust checks before either of those two buy it? Facebook & twitter is basically the entire western social-network ecosystem

  2. Charlie Clark Silver badge
    Megaphone

    Job done?

    Startup with no revenue stream but huge membership base seeks buyer to pay off creditors. Right, where are the next group of suckers who need their wallets* lightening.

    Maybe we could club together to close the shitstream down? Put me down for a fiver!

    *Fortunately only a few credulous rich individuals are under threat of actually losing out. Most dollars are likely to come from the same banks and pension funds that so happily invested OPM in securitised credit card backed mortgages and other financial niceties!

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Roget's Tech Thesaurus

    Was the length of the article limited to the number of entries for Gobble and Farcebook in the author's new and improved technology thesaurus?

    Paris - 'cos she's probably got a whole page to herself.

  4. Mystic Megabyte

    Don't bother!

    Another thing that will be turned off in my Gmail account, like Buzz and Chat.

  5. Gary F
    Grenade

    Stupid amount of money

    I fail to see a how free service that lets you share 140 chars of text with other people is worth £billions. Where is their income, apart from investors who think other investors are a valid stream of income. It's crazy, crazy, crazy. The world has gone mad!

    1. MineHandle
      Boffin

      It's all about $/user

      Well, if you can monetize 200m users at say $1 a month = $2.4bn / year. Twitter is now so engrained in certain branches that I would bet many would be willing to pay $10/year just to keep the thing ads free. Maybe not 200m of them, but many millions, for sure. Likewise Facebook. Infact if Facebook buy Twitter and then charge $10/year for access to both, I am sure there's a healthy profit to be had there. I just can't figure out why they are not charging for this yet. $10/year is nothing. Your ISP could bundle this sort of stuff into your broadband account.

      I don't really know, but I guess the valuations are based on how much money you can squeeze out of each user. And when you have 200m or 500m users, it doesn't take much per user to make a tidy profit.

      1. Renato
        Megaphone

        Re: It's all about $/user

        I don't think people would pay for Twitter or Facebook. A great number of those users are teenagers without income (or their allowance). What teenager would spend $x in Facebook instead of buying booze? :P And that's not counting they've got infinite SMS plans.

        There is also the psychological factor: something that costs $0,01 is infinitely expensive compared to a free thing. This article on Wired says it well: <http://www.wired.com/techbiz/it/magazine/16-03/ff_free?currentPage=all>. And I guess El Reg also ran some article about this too.

        Let's face it, those Web 2.0 Social things are useless, it's just rebadging of the ol' internet protocols on top of HTTP with a shiny coating: BBS, IRC, e-mail, instant messaging, plain and simple webhosting.

        My usage of Facebook: my profile picture, some text there and that's it. Someone posts on my "wall", I get an email, I access Facebook, reply the message and close the tab.

        Twitter is like a broadcast SMS, which, oh, IRC was too, but not limited to 140 chars.

        Well, maybe I'm getting old.

        Megaphone: GET OFF MY LAWN YOU DAMN KIDS! <mutter>

  6. JaitcH
    WTF?

    Twitter is acceptable in China and elsewhere

    One advantage Twit has over FB is that certain governments, who have understandably restricted FB, permit access to Twit.

    I guess if FB does the deal it will be to stop competition with it's web site whereas Google could use it as a vehicle to challenge FB.

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