Twitter; the social site that’s taking the world by storm. I won’t waste time talking about what Twitter is, why you should do it, the unique ways to market with it, that’s been covered enough.
What I do want to talk about is why I think an Apple / Twitter deal would be a success.
Rumors are flying about the valuation of Twitter. Offers from Facebook, talks with Google, and now a rumored $700M cash offer from Apple have the blogosphere in a frenzy. My opinion of the phenomenon: Facebook, nah.. Google, maybe.. Apple - yes. Truth be told I’m an apple fan-boy. I have 2 Apple PC’s at home, 2 ipods ,an iphone, and I even stop fast-forwarding the DVR if I see the “Hi I’m a Mac” commercials.
In the last few years Apple has done something remarkable; salvage the recording industry from certain death. The first version of Napster and the mp3 changed the record business forever. Music was instantly de-valued and giant record companies lost their grip on the most important revenue stream they had; CD sales. Enter Apple, the ipod and itunes. Apple decided that it would go toe to toe with the free digital music revolution and fight it with a simple piece of hardware (ipod) and it’s software counterpart (itunes). These two now household staples are accountable for billions of paid for song purchases, movies rentals, application purchases, etc. With the invent of the iphone, digital e-commerce is at your fingertips and your favorite media is a multi-touch away.
This reason alone is why I think Apple should buy Twitter and in doing so, develop Twitter’s business model into something enormous. As it is now, Twitter is still a phenomenon. It hasn’t made a dollar but it’s worth a fortune (yes I did mean to write that). The idea is brilliant; both simplistic and revolutionary. In my opinion though, Twitter does need help. It needs a company like Apple to realize their vision by further integrating Twitter into hardware (iphone, ipod touch, macs, etc) and building out the software counterpart further. I feel like Apple could keep the simplicity of 140 characters while realizing the revenue potential that’s waiting to be unleashed.
Imagine a world where your friend tweets about a new song they heard while watching Grey’s Anatomy, you read that tweet and are able to buy both without ever leaving twitter, I don’t think we’re too far away from seeing that happen and I wouldn’t be surprised if Apple is the one to help get them there.
- Posted By Matt Johnson
