Twitter = YouTube | Hacker News Reader

Twitter = YouTube

battellemedia.com

15 pointsEastSmith12 comments

> That means Google most likely really, really wants to buy Twitter. (So does Facebook, but we'll get to that in a second).

I think part of the appeal of Twitter is that it is not a Google or Facebook property. A way to search content without going through Google. Real-time search can be really helpful, even if there is an echo-chamber effect at times. I find interesting people to follow constantly with 'SDK' as my Summize keyword. Plus, it appeals to at least two of the seven deadly sins (pride and possibly envy). I hope that they stay independent and start experimenting with revenue generation models.

what difference does it make if it's a Goog company or not?

How often do you want to see a video clip, as opposed to looking at realtime stats? I've done one Twitter search ever, for notadouche.com when it caught on, and that's all I've needed. If an event happens, Twitter gets hits, but even then the need for video is much more constant.

How many times do I need to host video versus talk about something breaking? How many times do I want to do each? YouTube gives me an essential service: put video online. Twitter doesn't.

How many times do you share a YouTube video as opposed to sharing a tweet?

Great article. Suddenly Twitter has become so powerful, be it at the Oscars, ABC Nightline or President's speech, everyone asks you to twitter them your opinion. In my opinion, that's huge... Google should buy it and provide seamless integration with Android. I hear they are planned to come out with Android for 5-6 other cariers (other than T-Mobile), this will help them for sure...

I'm unclear why they would buy it. Twitter is not a heavy technology thing, Google could easily roll their own very quickly. The userbase also could quite quickly be built up from googles existing users.

The brand obviously has value, but I'm skeptical google would offer what Twitter would be wanting.

They've already got it. On Google chat you can have a status and on Google latitude you can have a status.

Google WANTS the users and the information they provide.

I disagree. The reason twitter works is because that's all it is - a simple status update. Rather than a feature to set your status on an existing product. So google don't have it.

Portraying it as a feature on another product is an interface choice -- and Google could choose to ape the Twitter simplicity.

If only they hadn't killed Jaiku.

Google's wonderful at competing when they can change the experience paradigm (Gmail, Google Maps). They're terrible when they can't (Google Answers, Google Video). If Google tried to ape the look and feel of Twitter ("but better!"), they'd fail.

Jaiku was (relativelly speaking) stillborn - just like pownce...

Nicely said. It's about search.

Its not so much about search as the realtime indexing, at least for now. Their db is up-to-the-minute; their search algorithms are 15 years old.

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