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Twitter To Buy TweetDeck For $40 Million – $50 Million
- pclark 15y agoTweetDeck had ~10% of Twitters user base as users, and they sold for a mere $50M. This should speak volumes about "not being someones bitch."
- jcampbell1 15y ago...or not being in a market where no one knows how to make money. The best exits are for the companies that don't need to.
- pclark 15y agoTweetDeck could make barrels of money if Twitter allowed them to run adverts. (of some capacity)
- brandnewlow 15y agoTweetdeck could run adverts just fine, Twitter just didn't want them running them in a sketchy in-stream manner, which I think is fair since their whole app just sits on top of Twitter.
- truthtechnician 15y agoAnd running adverts wouldn't destroy a huge portion of the userbase?
- dotBen 15y agoThoughts on whether Twitter will actually maintain Tweetdeck post-acquisition? For me, I have a feeling they will mothball it for three reasons: a) The aesthetic and visual approach of Tweetdeck doesn't fit in with the way Twitter wants its product used b) Twitter are looking to staff up a London office, it would make sense to use Tweetdeck (based in London) as that office (EDIT: the implication being that said staff would work on Twitter related business, not Tweetdeck) c) This was all about a tactical blocking of UberMedia, not a strategic product acquisition. Regardless of what happens to the 'main' Tweetdeck product, the ancillary iPhone and Android apps must surely be slated to be shelved given they compete directly with Twitters existing offering... I can only assume this is good news for the other mobile apps out there, like TweetCaster for Android
- jazzychad 15y agoor they could just directly insert their Promoted Products directly into the TweetDeck clients. TweetDeck was already a testing partner for their rev-share program. why make all those users mad when you can just stick your ads right in front of them?
- pclark 15y agoTweetDeck is loved by it's audience, and Twitter has taken a lot of flack for breaking products recently. I think they'll leave them alone for the near future. TweetDeck presumably has a modest burn rate compared to Twitter, for it's impact.
- teyc 15y agoI'm reminded of Alister Croll's article that "Twitter is a protocol, not a site" http://www.bitcurrent.com/twitters-not-a-site-its-a-protocol/ http://www.bitcurrent.com/twitters-not-a-site-its-a-protocol... There is no reason why Tweetdeck couldn't co-exist with Twitter's main clients. Twitter power users are the ones who tweet the most and innovate the most. Think of RT, # tags, pictures. Having a bleeding edge product keeps the power users happy without alienating the existing users by moving their cheese all the time.
- dotBen 15y agoProblem is, Twitter don't see twitter as a protocol.
- nikcub 15y agoI bet that a lot of the internal discussion and hesitance within Twitter over the past couple of years has been around this very topic. It seems that the product guys won the argument over the platform guys. The problem now is that a large part of the reason why the product was successful is because of the platform and the dev ecosystem
- dillona 15y agoAnymore
- timjahn 15y agoA company that doesn't make money buys another company that doesn't make money. The Silicon Valley economy exists entirely on its own with no relation to the "real world".
- jonursenbach 15y agoWhat makes you think that Twitter isn't profitable, or at least has some incoming cash flow that isn't pumped in by VC or the secondary market?
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- truthtechnician 15y agoI'll bite. Here's why I don't think Twitter is profitable or will be: 1) No ads. I don't see any now. "But, they can add advertisements later!" No they can't. Adding advertisements to Twitter will destroy their brand and everything that makes them "cool." 2) No clear picture on their profits and revenue. Profitable companies or companies with a solid revenue model have nothing to hide. There's no reason to hide your money situation if you're successful or have a successful strategy. Twitter doesn't. Their strategy relies on selling to the VC community, not selling to users. 3) Buying up competitors before you're posting profits means twitter's only asset (users) are hard to maintain control of.
- jonursenbach 15y agoTwitter already has ads thought, and has had them for a while now. Promoted Tweets.
- timjahn 15y agoFrom what I've read, I don't believe their current monetization techniques are making anywhere near enough money to equal what's been pumped in from funders.
- bbhacker 15y agoCould some share his opinion about other players in the Twitter ecosystem? I am thinking about Seesmic that has acquried ping.fm, is bonding heavily with Salesforce.com. Are they still a relevant player in the field?
- shazow 15y agoTweetDeck is also the only mainstream Twitter client I could find that supports Identi.ca (and other federated Status.net derivatives). I'm betting on s/is/was/ very soon.
- joebadmo 15y agoAlso Google Buzz (yes, I'm one of its four users). And even aside from that, on Android it's easily my favorite Twitter client, and now my only hope is that one or more of those alternatives or Dave Winer's latest project or something else will save us from Twitter.
- copper 15y agoFWIW, Buzz has a far better S/N ratio than twitter: I find people like Terence Tao, in particular, to be particularly insightful when they're not hampered by a 140 character limit.
- kloncks 15y agoUbermedia really got screwed on this one. They went from having significant leverage and controlling a lot of tweeting marketshare...to losing all that.
- spatulon 15y agoThis also means that Twitter could now have, if it chooses, an official branded client that runs on Windows. When they announced Twitter for Mac, they said: "We acquired atebits with a focus on launching our own Twitter iPhone application. Since then, we’ve been asked repeatedly for a new version of Tweetie for Mac. We decided that the new version fits well into our goal of ensuring that mainstream users will have the best possible experience on popular platforms." Mobile platforms may be the future, and an OS X client allows them to show off a bit and gain influential users, but the sheer size of the Windows user-base is not to be sniffed at.
- andypants 15y agoI really hope twitter decides to keep developing tweet deck...
- ddemchuk 15y agoThe day Twitter reports MAKING $50 million dollars rather than SPENDING $50 million dollars will cause celebration on the streets filled with champagne and delight...until then, they're just a giant spam channel with a lot of VC
- Joakal 15y ago"Twitter Inc. will probably more than triple its advertising revenue to $150 million this year as more companies use it to spread marketing messages, according to Internet researcher EMarketer Inc." http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-01-24/twitter-s-ad-revenue-may-triple-to-150-million-emarketer-says.html http://www.businessweek.com/news/2011-01-24/twitter-s-ad-rev...
- ddemchuk 15y agoGross revenue means nothing, profit is the only thing that matters. Considering they have $360 million[1] in VC, and no mention of actual profitability after 5 years, they're pretty high on the "Most Successful Failures" list still. 1. http://www.crunchbase.com/company/twitter http://www.crunchbase.com/company/twitter
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- webbruce 15y agoTwitter is awesome and all but should focus on some sort of revenue to pay back investors...
- ggarron 15y agoI am still trying to guess how they are going to generate revenue, without loosing "followers"
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- dylanrw 15y agoIt's nuts to see the bird icon I made coupled with a product go this far. Go Tweetdeck! :)