It has been recently announced that popular social bookmarking site Facebook will no longer be acquiring up and coming micro-blogging website Twitter. Facebook have in the past publically admitted to being a fan of Twitter, however, due to several reasons, a potential deal could not be agreed.
The popularity of Twitter has grown significantly in recent times, particularly among businesses and bloggers alike. The function of Twitter is quite simple really: it operates by allowing users to post short blog posts of up to 140 characters in length in response to the question “What are you doing?”
In addition, once you have registered with Twitter, you can then receive updates from other users via the Twitter website, whilst also being able to follow any member who should post information that is of interest to you.
Apparently one of the main reasons for the breakdown in a deal was that Twitter’s executives and investors would like to continue in their own attempts to build up revenue, rather than receive help from such an established business. But, some feel that the acquisition would have been a good move for Twitter; similarly, others believe that Twitter are not as important to Facebook as perhaps what Facebook could have been to Yahoo.
It was also revealed that Twitter are not ready to sell their little innovation, maintaining a strong belief that their business will continue to grow in popularity, benefiting them in the long run. This is in addition to the fact that Facebook were offering $500 million of its stock at the $15 million valuation, with concerns being raised whether the amount offered in stock was actually worth $500 million. As such, Twitter felt the deal was slightly undervalued.
But considering Facebook and Twitter both maintain such a mutual respect for each other, it may be a case of never say never between these two growing faces in social networking.
November 27, 2008
social media