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Twitter is reportedly in conversation with a number of tech companies for a potential sale. According to CNBC, the social company is in talks with the likes of Google and cloud computing company...
The suiters [sic] courting Twitter are said to be interested in the data the company generates from its 313 million active users. However, sources say that, while conversations are ongoing and picking up steam, there's no assurance that a deal will be inked. As a result, Twitter's stocks have soared as high as 23 percent based on the news. Meanwhile, TechCrunch reports that the company has just lost two key staffers, including head of TV Andrew Adashek.
Source: http://www.theverge.com/2016/9/23/13028616/twitter-sale-talks-google-salesforce
(Score: 5, Interesting) by julian on Saturday September 24 2016, @05:06AM
I agree, and many people here who don't like it seem to be carrying around a caricature of Twitter in their minds instead of the possibility is actually represents.
The main problem with Twitter is that it's a business, a private website, a corporation, and a closed system. The web needs something *like* Twitter, but it does not Need Twitter the corporation, Twitter the business, Twitter the advertising company. What we need is a *protocol* like Twitter that no one has central control over. Imagine if e-mail was entirely controlled by one company that updated the protocol at their whim, adding and removing features as they needed, and always were under the pressure of making money. It wouldn't be something you'd want to use.
Twitter has resisted becoming something I don't want to use, but only because it hasn't been able to make money. If Twitter ever starts turning a profit it will achieve this through becoming a service I'll hate.
Unfortunately, network effects ruin any attempts to reinvent Twitter as an open protocol. Twitter is useful because lots of people are there and lots of people are there because lots of other people are there. It's intractable.
So therefore I like Twitter but I hope it dies. I hope it dies and something non-profit, decentralized, federated, and open like E-mail or Newsgroups replaces it. But I doubt this will happen.