Tuesday, November 25, 2008

Why would Facebook want to buy Twitter?

Twitter turned them down. $ 500 million in stock was the price tag. $ 15 billion was the valuation on Twitter. Twitter has 6,000,000 registrations and did not want to sell on the first offer. Marc Zuckerberg (Facebook's founder) said Twitter was an 'elegant model'. Now I am on both Facebook and Twitter (don't have a huge amount of Facebook 'friends' nor do I have any real following on Twitter).

I still have trouble understanding how either Facebook or Twitter will make money. And maybe because I am an older guy I have difficulty understanding why people would want to know what I am doing 'right now'. I admit I probably just don't get it. Folks it is not all that exciting most of the time - I mean it's fine for me but why would anyone care about some of the posts I read on both? I realize I am far from being any kind of fascinating person but I also feel that most of the posts I read are self-aggrandizing and frivolous.

As I have noted before unless companies like Facebook and Twitter (and LinkedIn etc.) figure out a revenue model I have my doubts about their long term viability. Will we look back in five years at all this moment to moment posting of life events as extraneous and TMI? My guess is yes to a certain degree but what also is likely to happen is that these social networking sites will mature and morph into something we (or maybe it's just me) cannot quite see at the moment.

I'm off to NYC for meetings a lunch. Yes I know you don't care. Why should you?