Google (or at least someone in sound mind) should buy Twitter
Mary-Jo Foley wrote this morning in regards to a rumour circulating around the networks, that Google was considering buying the mass social status website, Twitter.
Twitter has millions of users and had the potential to be the next big thing. Nobody could have estimated how big Twitter would be, from an initial concept of letting people write 140 characters at a time. Had they spent even a smidgen of time working on some functionality to gain profits, they could have gained into the multi-millions of dollars by now.
As of the end of March, Twitter was estimated to be worth $55 million, yet questionable as to the "actual worth" of the product with Facebook wanting to buy the name, the software and the rights to Twitter for around $500 million.
A company without a business plan is essentially a pointless venture. Even charities and non-government organisations, those which make profits and those which are non-profit, have some business planning to ensure the venture stays afloat.
As Twitter is a free service, there is no money directly going into the company, and with server costs, bandwidth charges, datacenter storage and energy costs racking up, the company is losing money it doesn't necessarily have. It's easier to make money using Twitter than to make money from it, at the moment.
Twitter has been an outlet to millions of users and has taken off like nobody could believe. If you described the concept of the site to someone a decade again, they would have laughed in your face and shrugged the idea as a flop. But if a company wants to survive, having the funds there to sustain yourself is almost as important as keeping people using the service.
I do believe, Microsoft or Google, or any other super-power within the industry should snap up the software. Microsoft would ditch the entire thing and integrate it into something else (WinFS anyone?), Google would slap advertisements all over it, Yahoo! would start charging for it, and Facebook wouldn't bother doing anything - they've already stolen the Twitter functionality.
Update: title updated, my apologies.
Oh, who cares? I hate Twitter with a passion anyway.
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