Apple Is Said to Discuss an Investment in Twitter | Hacker News Reader

Apple Is Said to Discuss an Investment in Twitter

nytimes.com

116 pointsiProject58 comments

A lot of people are probably going to blow this out of proportion as Apple looking to buy Twitter and lock everyone out but here's what I think:

Tim Cook knows a lot of his users use FB and Twitter as their primary e-communication channels and that that's where they spend a lot of their time and is the primary use of the mobile devices he sells them.

Deals like this then have a single aim: to ensure the optimal consumer experience. Tim wants the Twitter app on iOS to be the best in breed. Not just today but in 5 years. When Twitter introduces a new feature, Tim wants that thing to be working smoothly on iOS on day 1. When Tim launches his search engine with iOS 7 or 8 he wants to have Twitter search built in.

That costs money and as it turns out Apple has a metric crapton of it.

I think Apple just doesn't want Twitter screwing it over like Google did and Facebook will.

The fact that Google wouldn't provide turn by turn navigation, 3D and other features to iOS was a hard and expensive lesson for Apple. And with Facebook also getting into apps and phones it needs a third party.

Google didn't provide turn by turn but we don't know why. Apple gets a cut of Google's search revenues on iPhone; android vendors don't get as large of a cut (or any cut in some cases).

"Apple, which has stumbled in its efforts to get into social media, has talked with Twitter in recent months about making a strategic investment in it, according to people briefed on the matter."

Every bit of substance that this article has, is stated in this first sentence. Anonymous sources like this, with no real corroborating facts, are usually indicative of PR people testing the waters for things that might happen. We already know that Twitter and Apple have a relationship, what new facts does this article have that indicate that anything worthy of discussion is happening? I doubt anything of substance will come of this.

Also, Apple has a track record of paving their own path the last 10 years. If this were true, Apple doesn't feel like Apple anymore. It would feel like the future is in someone else rather than theirs.

This would be the end of Apple as a culture, though they would still succeed as a company.

I'm not ready to subscribe to this. I don't think Apple will either. Too soon.

Apple, i.e. Steve Jobs, stated multiple times that they don't have to build everything themselves, that they aren't good at everything, and that strategic partnerships with outside companies is important. If my memory is correct, Jobs even said that one of his biggest mistakes in his early career was not realizing this.

This is true; and within Apple's success. I guess I see them having an incredible ability to meld things into their own.

A strategic and public investment, like Twitter, feels unlike them. Twitter seems to be the news, not Apple.

The AuthenTec acquisition, however, feels very Apple. They have a vision, they found a partner (and for some reason, acquired them). If it weren't for the purchase, AuthenTec would still be unknown to me.

The biometric integration will be, bar none, an Apple event.

Ping is a flop of biblical proportions. It was almost painful to see Apple try and marry off such hideous offspring to all it's iTunes users. We all just laughed.

Now Apple wants to go exclusive with Twitter, the sexy "it" girl that everybody wants to court. It makes sense to me. It's the only thing that could possibly atone for Ping.

You're overreaching. Once FB pulled the rug out from Ping -- which happened before launch -- no one really expected much of it.

Apple doesn't want exclusive with Twitter, they just signed a huge deal with FB for the same integration they've gave Twitter. Applen just wants to make sure they don't get locked out of things many of their customers see as vital.

Oh no... flash forward a year or 2, and Apple will buy all of Twitter! It's their knight in a white horse coming to bail them out! Now I'll never get to see how Twitter will make serious revenue to sustain itself.

Twitter will earn $260 million revenue this year and $1 billion expected in 2014.

Seems like serious revenue to me.

Apparently, the owners of Twitter will make most of their revenue selling computers and other consumer electronics :)

As someone who has a significant stake in Apple (as a part of my personal investments), this concerns me.

Steve used to say that it's what you don't do that matters most.

He has also said that Apple's mission is to simply make great products. That's its identity. Make great products.

I don't see how investing/partnering with Twitter fits that.

As a customer and shareholder I want Apple to stay true to its identity and mission. An identity that cost a significant amount of pain and time to discover.

Maybe Tim wants to change Apple's core identity. I'm not sure.

I fear he may make strategic decisions mainly because he wants to distinguish himself from Steve.

Steve even told him not to play the "what would Steve do?" game.

But I think Steve always asked, in the end, what's best for Apple and its customer.

And I hope Tim does the same.

I hope he focuses on product. Make great products.

I recently signed up for iTunes Match and I've just had problems with it. It hasn't "just worked".

I hope that's not a sign of what's to come.

- - -

I want to add that I think it's still very early in the game when it comes to social.

I think it's entirely possible that Twitter is the RIMM of social.

It might not be, but I think it's possible.

Apple, please stay away from social networks; especially right now.

> Maybe Tim wants to change Apple's core identity.

The Wall Street Journal has its own article on this[1], and it reports that "Apple Inc. held discussions with Twitter Inc. more than a year ago about taking a strategic investment in the short-messaging service." Steve was still alive more than a year ago.

1: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044334370457755...

Apple missed on e-mail by making Mobile Me a paid service. This may be their way of making up for that, and having a solid foot hold in a consumer social network without that needing to be baked into their DNA.

Makes me wonder why Microsoft didn't turn its 2% of Facebook into a larger integration which both companies could have touted as value-added on both platforms.

I disagree with the statement that Twitter has problems finding a monetization model. What do you think about the following idea:

Many people use Twitter to link to apps they like (Apple App Store, Android Store etc) or to products (links to Amazon) etc. Twitter already detects that. If you post a link to an app Twitter automatically shows the icon and screenshots - at least in the web version. All Twitter has to do now is to add their own "affiliate token" to the URL and then they would profit: 2-3% for each and every thing you buy on the App Store and up to 10% for things on Amazon. People do click links on Twitter all the time so their cookie would always be "refreshed".

I have an application in the App Store ( http://store-news-app.com/ ) that is free and links to the best deals in the Mac/iOS app store. I can tell you: With just a couple of thousands requests / day I make good money from it. Imagine what Twitter could do just by adding a few bytes to every Amazon/App Store URL posted on Twitter...

Ugh, I'm really opposed, as an OSX and iOS user, to Apple having this direct of a tie to any social networking company. It would be awful if they avoided adding more sharing options and OS integration for 3rd-party applications like Facebook because they could be a competitor to Twitter or any other investment. I'd rather they stay as relatively neutral as they can.

I'm opposed too, but for a different reason. I'm opposed to any sort of social network integration into my OS.

Does it matter, if you are not forced to use it?

I'm not forced to use the Facebook app on my smartphone but it sure pisses me off that I can't remove it without rooting it.

Vote with your money.

I'm not sure. I think to myself I'd rather have the development time spent elsewhere in the operating system, but whether it'd make an actual difference in reality is a guessing game.

“Down the road, social engagement may dictate how consumers spend,” Mr. Hilwa said.

I doubt it. Social is pretty overrated. While sharing is still important to many people, it seems that great software and the ability to access quality content is far more important than what my casual aquaintences are up to. Anecdotally, my 'friends' seem to be less social online and less willing to share every little life detail despite the increases ease of doing so.

The analysts are wrong. It's like saying the Mac needs to be more social to be successful in the future. Besides, how much more social Cana smartphone get? It's a phone and a pocket computer already. Besides, Apple is primarily a hardware company and secondarily a content agency. Their revenues don't depend on advertising, which is really the only business model social currently has. The last thing Apple wants to do is be an advertising company.

Still, I am happy with Apple getting friendly with Twitter. I find Twitter to be much less obnoxious than Facebook. API and infrastructure debacles aside, Twitter seems a lot less arrogant and threatening than Zuck and Co. Twitter, for example doesn't suddenly make your direct messages public or change privacy settings in onerous and unexpected ways.

I would argue that social has always dictated behavior. Whether social networks can properly replicate real world social interactions is yet to be determined.

Eh? Consumer behavior for the past 50+ years has been dictated by mass media, especially televison. This isn't our individual social networks; it's a larger, single dialogue we all tap into.

Has it?

For decades communication researchers had trouble finding big media effects. That said, the same seems to be true for social networks.

I have to admit that my perception towards Twitter is very similar to yours. In comparison to Facebook or Google they have been very transparent about Government activities - for example by fighting government subpoenas of the Occupy protesters or by not shutting down most accounts of Anonymous. In so far it seems to me that Twitter has been one of the good guys who still care about free speech and refrain from the overanxious self-censoring so eagerly practiced by Facebook and alikes.

"Respect the user's voice."

As far as I can tell, it's not an empty platitude, Twitter puts their money where their mouth is. I admire them for it.

Disclosure: I work there. I see those words on laptop cases and screen savers every day at the Twitplex.

Can you disclose me some Twitter stickers? This user's voice is saying, "stickers please!" In all seriousness, respecting the user is paramount. Facebook tends to respect themselves often at the expense of the user which is counterproductive: an engaged and trusting user base will lead to higher revenues.

"Social is pretty overrated."

One way to look at it is to say that the Internet didn't really turn out the way we all wanted it to. Another way to look at it is that we're not there yet but we're making progress.

Personally I say it's the latter, if for no other reason than on principle.

That said, remember what we all used to think the Internet would be like. Damn.

Social is only overrated if you have a limited view of what it means.

Look at the sustained popularity of micro communities and the rise of new ones e.g. Pinterest, Instagram. Not to mention all the communities most people aren't aware of for older people, mothers, children etc. And this is all without having the entire world involved.

Social is going nowhere so long as people want to share ideas, knowledge and content with each other.

Many times (here and elsewhere) I've stated my opinion that I believe Twitter to be ultimately doomed. It is being relegated to infrastructure (and thus will be commoditized in time) and (IMHO) it is floundering in finding a monetization model.

Don't get me wrong: they have an exceptionally long runway so this won't happen anytime soon but I think it will end up being acquired by the likes of Facebook, Google (disclaimer: I work for Google) or Apple.

I don't see a compelling reason for Facebook to buy Twitter other than to deny it to the other two (which could be compelling but given the direction of their stock price this seems like a hard sell to Twitter's investors and board).

Apple could marry its mobile ecosystem, particularly the messaging infrastructure, to Twitter and be a dominant player.

Google could do the same thing but I think Apple has the most to gain from picking up social assets (note: these opinions are strictly personal views).

Given that it makes sense for Apple to buy a stake in Twitter. Large(r) companies often do this. It's a poison pill. Take a large enough stake and you can make it more difficult for others to acquire that company and be int he box seat to be the acquirer if it should come to that.

I believe that if Twitter gives Apple, say a 10% or bigger stake, they are insuring an exit strategy if they can't continue to exist independently.

I beg to differ. Twitter is my primary source of real time information. In fact I go to find relevant information from people I follow from time to time. By the way, Twitter is very popular amongst younger generation.

Relegated to infrastructure? They have users and they have eye-balls. That's what matters. By the way, don't forget promoted tweets are really working for them.

Fully agree. I don't 'Google', I 'Twitter'. Primarily through my feed of course but I use also Twitter search for all the topics I'm interested in but that are not covered by the accounts I follow. Exaggerated, but Google Search is slow compared to Twitter.

What if Twitter also indexes the web pages that are/were referred to by the links in the tweets and builds a Google like search page for that index. For example, the number of re-tweets and clicks can be used as input for the sort relevance. The result is a search engine that is crowed sourced combined with a robotic one and in real time. Combine "AdSense" and there you have it.

as soon as twitter starts using tweets for ranking link relevance, there will come the army of people trying to seo the ranking and leaving relevance in dust.

I think twitter is better with focusing on their core competency of providing real time information rather then being side tracked into something very different.

Apple's stake makes good sense because offers both backups and decreases reliance on others. For Twitter it gurantees a medium/eyeballs and for Apple content.

Good point, but Google also has to counter bad seo practices.

Twitter already has good anti spam algorithms and for this case they should be able to determine the quality of accounts and the quality of the tweets as well: age of an account, diversity of the tweets, hash tags, verified accounts, account linking to 3rd parties, re-tweets by other 'good' accounts, etc.

I think that such an offering would only extend and enhance their current competency since I'm already using Twitter like I used to Google to search for real time info. But I like Twitter to become better, more advanced and more relevant in search. I want to find the information referred to in tweets (blogs, news articles, videos, charts, etc) not only sorted by time, but sorted by quality as option. Hundreds of 'opinion' tweets with no links are less valuable. I don't want to wade through them.

Perhaps this is one of the reasons why Twitter decided to end the availability of their feed through Google Search?

Certainly its achievable but it would be a massive undertaking, before that they need to focus on retrieving some of those aged tweets and stopping the whales from taking over.

I do agree with your point about generally in having a more realtime and relevant serach engine. But I think instead of twitter some one working across networks would be in a better position.

bit.ly is going in this direction with its redesign and rt.ly and social sharing widgets like Addthis and Sharethis would also have a very good view of realtime data. That they could use.

The only advantage I could see with twitter is if they do sentiment analysis of the tweet text and then understand relevance. The context they have available could be akin to how google bot uses link title and anchor text but with 140characters more focused.

Twitter ending availability I think had more to do with google clearing space to forthcoming integration of g+

Twitter's best days are yet to come IMHO.

If they were to partner with Apple and EVERY app, band and movie in iTunes was seamlessly integrated with a corresponding Twitter page it could be huge. It would blunt the growth of Facebook pages and forever relegate Google+ to the geek community.

Between twitter and google+, I'd say google+ is the one with mass appeal. It's simply better for what people call "social" - sharing updates, sharing photos/albums, chat/conversations etc all within their own private social group.

come on now ...

I think I wasn't clear enough there. Google+ is not more widely used than twitter NOW. There are a lot of people on Facebook who were formerly on Orkut, Myspace etc who've never had a twitter account and just don't GET twitter. If I had to pick the next facebook sized network, it would be Google+ and not twitter for that reason.

PS: I don't even believe the current growth/engagement numbers coming out of twitter entirely. There's a lot more spammy accounts there than used to be that put out hundreds of tweets a day and I wonder if that's heavily padding twitter's user growth currently. Most of my current followers are "fake". Same with my friends who aren't particularly famous. The statistics don't reflect this properly.

I remember seeing a study investigating the proportion of active accounts, vs. the number of dormant accounts. I think the study found that only about 20% of accounts were active. I can only imagine that the ratio of real accounts to automated accounts is far worse.

I also think that SV peeps use twitter at a far higher percentage than the real world, leading to very skewed perceptions.

Really? I know a lot of people around the world who use Twitter, ranging from notable authors to famous physicists to fashion designers to hockey sportswriters. G+ MIGHT get there but for now, I know far more variety of disciplines who actively use Twitter over G+ and Facebook.

Remember how other competitors to Twitter (Pownce, Jaiku, etc) some didn't have the character limit, allowed the user to post photos, etc

See where they are now?

There you have it

It may be easier for G+ to be used, and this is important, but Twitter has a more faithful following, and more specific uses

Were they competitors to Twitter, or did they stray too far into being seen as competitors to Facebook?

Almost a exactly a year ago I wrote this[1] - I've added contemporary notes in italics:

Apple should (and I think will) buy Twitter.

Here’s why:

Apple needs a social layer. Facebook could provide it but Apple hate them. Apple could roll out a new version of iTunes in a couple of days, replacing the Ping sidebar with Twitter. Deeper integration into iTunes would follow. More than a couple of days needed, but still holds true

Various free messaging apps are doing quite well on the iPhone. Bringing Twitter in as a native app on iOS devices would both expand Twitter, and provide another differentiator for Apple products. Other platforms would continue to be supported, but Twitter could be plumbed into iOS at the OS level. Networks would bitch about their SMS revenue dropping, but Apple doesn’t give a shit about that. Apple launched iMessage and wiped out the network operators SMS revenue

Twitter and Apple share a love of simplicity, both of concept and of design. Their users are from similar demographics. Twitter is heavily used by celebrities and musicians, their feeds could be linked in to their products on iTunes. Buying an album could offer you the chance to follow the artist on Twitter. If Jony Ive was designing a social network, it would look like Twitter. This is definitely true and remains so. The only thing that Apple wouldn't like is ugly usernames like Sasha85_x

Simple really. Apple could provide the missing revenue that Twitter needs. It might not make Twitter profitable, but it could bring it up to a level of lossmaking that was justifiable for the top-tier messaging service among handset manufacturers.

Twitter’s most recent valuation was reportedly $8billion. Apple could probably buy them for $12billion (a $4bn profit over a matter of months). That’s not much out of Apple’s $76billion stockpile. That stockpile is now $110bn

6. Twitter people would be happy to go to Apple. They’re cool, Apple is cool – it works. They think* they're cool*

7. I can actually visualize Steve Jobs walking onto stage and announcing it. Talk of changing the world etc. etc. etc. Sad.

You shouldn’t follow me on Twitter because I don’t use it. In fact it really pisses me off, but I can see that it works for millions of people. I use it a bit more now, but it still riles me up.

[1] http://www.alexmuir.com/2011/08/why-apple-will-buy-twitter/

Maybe they should start with an official Apple account of some sort on Twitter. ;)

Apple is currently in a bit of a pickle. Twitter is deeply integrated in the OS (both Mac and iOS). It makes sense that they invest a few days worth of profit to secure a more formal partnership.

I'm not sure why, at least at this point — it seems like it'd be really weird for Twitter to turn off the ability to post statuses/photos/etc and have an OS-wide account sign-in feature, which is basically all Apple's OS integration does. Like, so weird that you'd think Twitter would probably be making themselves irrelevant, so you wouldn't really care anyway.

Ping is rolling over in its' grave. I guess if you can't build it, buy it.

I had completely forgotten about Ping until just now.

Don't forget lala

Hold your horses everyone, we still have time. Apple won't take over a technology until it can find a way to make it worthless without an iTunes account...

Microsoft made a small strategic investment in facebook, I think if it keeps an open ecosystem an Apple investment in Twitter isn't a bad idea.

I wish Apple would have bought Skype instead of Microsoft, then Mac users wouldn't have to still contend with Skype's shit UI.

Use Facetime.

The rest of us use Skype because we can use it to talk to people that just happened to buy a computer from a different company than we did.

FaceTime still doesn't do Audio-only though. Or group conversations. Hardly a replacement.

Apparently this news is from about a year ago, and currently there's no such talk of an investment: http://in.mobile.reuters.com/article/idINL2E8IS2GO20120728?i...

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