How Facebook nearly bought Twitter
When it comes to Social Networking sites, Facebook is the current undisputed king. When it comes to microblogging and ‘status update’, however, Twitter rules. Facebook knows this, which is why it offered US$500 million’s worth of stock to Twitter, three weeks ago, to buy it.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your perspective, Twitter rebuffed the offer. There were concerns that $500 million of Facebook stock wasn’t actually worth $500 million, as well as worries over how Facebook would integrate the service into the site.
Lastly, it seems that Twitter wants to have a go at seeing if it can make any actual revenue itself first, before letting someone else try. After all, despite having considerable outgoings in server, SMS and staff costs, Twitter doesn’t actually make any money at all. Yet.
Twitter is a great app, we love it here at Shiny Towers. I already sync it with my Facebook status, and I’d love for more of my friends’ Facebook status updates to show up on my Twitter feed. For that reason, I have no real objection to Facebook owning it.
That said, there’s plenty of people I know who keep their Twitter and Facebook accounts very separate. I’m not sure they’d be too keen on the services merging. It’s likely that Twitter will eventually be bought by someone. Just not yet.
How would you feel about Facebook owning Twitter? Let us know in the comments.
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