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I'm always a little surprised at comments like this regarding a software/technology acquisition. This sort of thing is rarely about whether or not they "can" re

by thorax 18y ago

I'm always a little surprised at comments like this regarding a software/technology acquisition. This sort of thing is rarely about whether or not they "can" reproduce the technology, but how much value it would be for them to have versus the opportunity costs of working on it. Right now, Twitter is flush with cash from their recent funding. They need to continue their growth and their best engineers are obviously working to keep the site alive rather than designing new features. As such, it makes lots of sense to add features through acquisition given their circumstances. This particular feature has been tried and tested to work with their existing infrastructure. Because it builds on their API, they also don't have to worry about the design breaking during their internal scalability refactoring. This deal makes lots of sense to me and I would expect to see more of this from them as they fight to keep aloft.

vaksel 18y ago
its search not rocket science. Unless the acquisition is in the low 5 digit figures, it's probably a waste of money. Acquisitions are usually about getting the seller's user base or some unique piece of technology/patent, which is not the case here.
- thorax 18y ago
  5 digit figures? How are you getting that? How many full-time engineer "months" do you think Twitter would need to pay to get something as scalable as Summize? Who will test that it's ready to go live before the patience-thin Twitter user base? How much money would be spent on the scalability testing to see if the service can handle an Apple WWDC without crippling the rest of Twitter? I think you're greatly underestimating what they did with Summize. It's not rocket science, but there's real (and tried-by-fire) value there for Twitter. Summize didn't get $750k in angel funding to sell to someone in low 5 digits. We're talking about live search over a medium completely made up of small, frequent text messages. Real-time searching increases Twitter's value as the instantaneous information source it has become. They don't have a lot of strengths to build on, but that's definitely one of the most valuable things Twitter has to offer and Summize augments that. No brainer: buy Summize for a 2-4 million, add their search tools, get some of their engineers helping in the scalability problems, improve the API based on their feedback, have some of them continue working on their lab prototypes, and keep growing.
- webwright 18y ago
  Whoa-- so untrue. What do you think it costs to hire a good engineer? How about a good engineer who is already pretty intimately familiar with your offering's API? What about a collection of good engineers that are already used to working together?

by thorax 18y ago

vaksel 18y ago

its search not rocket science. Unless the acquisition is in the low 5 digit figures, it's probably a waste of money. Acquisitions are usually about getting the seller's user base or some unique piece of technology/patent, which is not the case here.

thorax 18y ago
5 digit figures? How are you getting that? How many full-time engineer "months" do you think Twitter would need to pay to get something as scalable as Summize? Who will test that it's ready to go live before the patience-thin Twitter user base? How much money would be spent on the scalability testing to see if the service can handle an Apple WWDC without crippling the rest of Twitter? I think you're greatly underestimating what they did with Summize. It's not rocket science, but there's real (and tried-by-fire) value there for Twitter. Summize didn't get $750k in angel funding to sell to someone in low 5 digits. We're talking about live search over a medium completely made up of small, frequent text messages. Real-time searching increases Twitter's value as the instantaneous information source it has become. They don't have a lot of strengths to build on, but that's definitely one of the most valuable things Twitter has to offer and Summize augments that. No brainer: buy Summize for a 2-4 million, add their search tools, get some of their engineers helping in the scalability problems, improve the API based on their feedback, have some of them continue working on their lab prototypes, and keep growing.
webwright 18y ago
Whoa-- so untrue. What do you think it costs to hire a good engineer? How about a good engineer who is already pretty intimately familiar with your offering's API? What about a collection of good engineers that are already used to working together?