Now that the Yahoo mess is no longer in the spotlight, BoomTown’s Kara Swisher has turned her attention to Twitter.
She suggests Twitter should go running into the arm’s of Facebook as quickly as possible based on the thesis that they look sweet together, Twitter’s chances of going IPO are dim, and doing a deal with Facebook would still give Twitter “influence and autonomy”
Kara, you’re wrong, wrong, wrong.
If Facebook bought Twitter, Twitter as we know it would be dead in no time.
Here’s just one example: third-party applications. Not so long ago, Facebook applications were all the rage and everyone was creating one. Then, Facebook did an about face – pun, intended – and decided it didn’t like all these applications messing around with peoples’ profiles. In an instant, the applications market pretty much died.
In the Twitter-sphere, third-party applications are an essential part of Twitter’s ecosystem. Given Twitter does little innovation itself, it’s the third-party developer who keep the community vibrant.
My sense is that if Facebook bought Twitter, Twitter would somehow be integrated into the Facebook experience – probably as a super-status service. Over time, Twitter as we know it would melt away – as well as many users, many of whom used to be Facebook users before discovering Twitter.
And as part of the Facebook empire, Twitter’s third-party developers would probably start to lose interest, and move on to the next interesting platform.
Perhaps in some Silicon Valley circles, a Facebook-Twitter marriage makes financial sense but it would be an arranged marriage rather than a happy relationship.
4 Comments
Hey, who says arranged marriages are not happy relationships ?
However, since Twitter is basically a simplified version of Facebook's newsfeed I can't really see how Twitter would "integrate" into Facebook except to disappear into it.
Couldn't agree more there. An obvious sellout if Twitter give into the Facebook. There is so many options for them with venture-capitalists coming out of there ears that there is no reason to jump into the digital bed with Facebook.
Further TwitterThoughts on my blog.
TwitThoughts
Facebook limited app development, as you mentioned. Why do you think Twitter has decided to cut their own ankles by changing their API limitations to 20k calls per hour, limiting services such as socialtoo? Everybody agrees third-party apps are an essential part of the Twitter community, so you'd think they would embrace them more.