"Tweet this!" - Google buy Twitter?
The online rumour mill has been churning recently to the tune of tweets and news articles suggesting that the search giant Google are set to acquire social media phenomenon Twitter.
Reports suggest that talks are in the later stages and that the deal would be in the $1 billion range, with Google paying through a mix of cash and stocks.
But what purpose would acquiring Twitter serve for the big G? Well, firstly it has been proposed (by Computerworld’s Seth Weintraub) that Twitter could help Google by providing a better pool of real time data from which Google News stories can be pooled and their popularity guaged in order to determine what deserves to rank highly. The platform would also help Google tie together other social networking sites it owns, Blogger and Orkut, in order to truly rival, and potentially dominate the social bookmarking super-powers such as Facebook and MySpace by offerring both “immediate” communication through Twitter, tied with the typical profile and personal news sharing that Orkut and Blogger provide.
A deal between Google and Twitter creators Evan Williams and Biz Stone wouldn’t be the first deal struck between the parties either. The Twitter founders previously sold personal blog publishing website Blogger to Google in February 2003 for an undisclosed fee.
Despite the numerous recent claims that Google has no interest in purchasing the social media platform, the value of Twitter is rapidly increasing. Attracting nearly 2.7 million users in the U.S. in December alone, and having secured an additional $35 million from venture captialists in February this year, the acquisition rate for users of the platform has begun to snowball at a phenomenal rate making the advertising potential for Google very lucrative. Not to mention the value of mining the large database of information Twitter has already accumulated.
Effectively, the deal would work out well for both parties. Google would get another valuable platform to monetise and harvest data from, while Williams and Stone would get richer off of yet more Google stocks and cash. We wait with baited breath to find out the results of these talks.
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