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I think in this case twitter has a lot more leverage here. THey have a lot of traction, great reputation (especially after "fixing" their scalability issues) a

I think in this case twitter has a lot more leverage here. THey have a lot of traction, great reputation (especially after "fixing" their scalability issues) and no competitors (not talking about friendfeed yet). So they can afford to hold out to sweeten the deal a bit more.

evgen 18y ago
I would probably read this in the opposite direction. All of the points you mark in favor of twitter are similarly true for facebook (they have more competition, but are pulling away in most important demographics.) The difference is that facebook can create a twitter competitor themselves and with their chat system have already shown that they know how to handle messaging, while twitter is nowhere close to getting into facebook's turf. The dangerous point about waiting for someone to sweeten an offer is that they probably have some internal "how much would it cost us to do this ourselves and just crush them" numbers to look at as well.
whatusername 18y ago
Twitter has a great reputation in small tech circles. My mum is on facebook. There is still a significant difference in user bases.. On the flipside - our lovely PM has a twitter account: http://twitter.com/KevinRuddPM http://twitter.com/KevinRuddPM So perhaps this is changing..
tlrobinson 18y ago
Not so sure about that. Twitter has about a million users (most of whom seem to be part of the tech crowd). Facebook has 100+ million users. Facebook's features includes basically all of Twitter's features, and a whole lot more. And Facebook doesn't experience nearly as much downtime, despite having 100x as many users and way more functionality.
trezor 18y ago
I'll just refer to my previous comment about twitter. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=378541 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=378541 Outside hacker news and "Valley-oriented" news-sites I've hardly heard it mentioned. Twitter may have potential, but it still has massive usability problems, and at large is one of the few services I've signed up for which has offered me absolutely nothing of value and no way to improve on that. Saying twitter, a bandwidth hole with no actual plan to monetize on its service, is worth millions is clearly overstating its value, even with its current user-base.
- paulsilver 18y ago
  It was mentioned on the front page of The Guardian (national UK newspaper) of Nov 29th, here's the article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/29/mumbai-terror-attacks-terrorism1 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/29/mumbai-terror-at... It is no where near as mainstream as Facebook, but it is starting to be mentioned in mainstream places, not just in the technology sections. To be honest, I'm not sure Twitter will go mainstream like Facebook has. Most of the value I get from it is to be in touch with friends throughout the day. Not a lot of workplaces will let you do that (mine does, but that's a benefit to being self employed :-) ) From what I see, Facebook is more oriented around much more asynchronous usage, which is a lot easier for most people to use.

evgen 18y ago

I would probably read this in the opposite direction. All of the points you mark in favor of twitter are similarly true for facebook (they have more competition, but are pulling away in most important demographics.) The difference is that facebook can create a twitter competitor themselves and with their chat system have already shown that they know how to handle messaging, while twitter is nowhere close to getting into facebook's turf. The dangerous point about waiting for someone to sweeten an offer is that they probably have some internal "how much would it cost us to do this ourselves and just crush them" numbers to look at as well.

whatusername 18y ago

Twitter has a great reputation in small tech circles. My mum is on facebook. There is still a significant difference in user bases.. On the flipside - our lovely PM has a twitter account: http://twitter.com/KevinRuddPM http://twitter.com/KevinRuddPM So perhaps this is changing..

tlrobinson 18y ago

Not so sure about that. Twitter has about a million users (most of whom seem to be part of the tech crowd). Facebook has 100+ million users. Facebook's features includes basically all of Twitter's features, and a whole lot more. And Facebook doesn't experience nearly as much downtime, despite having 100x as many users and way more functionality.

trezor 18y ago

I'll just refer to my previous comment about twitter. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=378541 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=378541 Outside hacker news and "Valley-oriented" news-sites I've hardly heard it mentioned. Twitter may have potential, but it still has massive usability problems, and at large is one of the few services I've signed up for which has offered me absolutely nothing of value and no way to improve on that. Saying twitter, a bandwidth hole with no actual plan to monetize on its service, is worth millions is clearly overstating its value, even with its current user-base.

paulsilver 18y ago
It was mentioned on the front page of The Guardian (national UK newspaper) of Nov 29th, here's the article: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/29/mumbai-terror-attacks-terrorism1 http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/29/mumbai-terror-at... It is no where near as mainstream as Facebook, but it is starting to be mentioned in mainstream places, not just in the technology sections. To be honest, I'm not sure Twitter will go mainstream like Facebook has. Most of the value I get from it is to be in touch with friends throughout the day. Not a lot of workplaces will let you do that (mine does, but that's a benefit to being self employed :-) ) From what I see, Facebook is more oriented around much more asynchronous usage, which is a lot easier for most people to use.