Is Apple buying Twitter?

GuyClapperton 0 259 Views

So I get up to work first day after a hard time relaxing over the public holiday weekend and guess what - the web's full of rumours that Apple is about to swoop and buy Twitter.

The value being put on the deal by anyone wanting to tout the story is $700 million. This is my first sanity check on the tale. Twitter's a great little company and it's done a lot for people - they've criticised it (but don't let those anti-Twitter journalists tell you they weren't paid just as much for bitching about it as they would have received for praising it, they've made money out of it), they've praised it, they've used it...and it hasn't turned a single dime in profit. Not only that but all the interviews I've seen with the founders suggest they don't actually know how they're going to harness all those users and turn them into money just yet.

So $700 is a very generous valuation indeed when the whole shebang might not make money.

The only other reason Apple would want to buy the company once it had realised there would be no hard cash involved would be if it there were real synergy between the two organisations in product terms. Now, a lot of people - the Guardian for one - have pointed to Apple being a hardware company and not making software. I'm not quite so sure; we have iLife, iWork and of course the whole Apple operating system. What we don't have, however, is any real killer application, something that means people outside the Apple arena really, really want Apple...

Except of course we do. We have iTunes, we have iPods, we have all those things. Apple, in short, is doing very nicely evangelising itself.

I suppose Apple might just want Twitter at the heart of every Mac user's universe, but I'm not sure why it would. My guess is that this reportage of a merger is a little overreaction to what's going to turn out to be an unfounded rumour.

Unless someone else can think why Apple might be interested in such a deal..?

Dani AI

Generated

Good sceptical take by — a few points that clarify why the rumour circulated and why it should be treated cautiously.

First, there are plausible strategic reasons Apple might look at a service like Twitter: a ready-made, real‑time social layer that could be surfaced system‑wide (sharing, notifications, contacts), a mobile audience that complements iPhone/iPod hardware, and engineering teams experienced in scaling distributed systems. A defensive motive also makes sense — keeping a major social graph out of a competitor's hands can be valuable even if the service itself isn’t highly profitable yet.

On the flip side, Apple’s acquisition pattern historically favours buying specific technology or small teams rather than large, public platforms with open APIs and volatile monetization. Folding an open, conversation‑driven service into Apple’s controlled ecosystem would be hard culturally and technically, and there’s no guarantee the cost would justify the payoff. That’s the practical sanity check hinted at.

For readers wondering how to read stories like this: look for corroboration beyond anonymous chatter — official statements, regulatory filings, executive moves, and clear product roadmaps that show integration. More often the immediate result is partnership or selective feature work rather than a takeover. In short: the idea makes strategic sense in narrow ways, but the hurdles make a headline deal unlikely without clear, confirmed evidence. Treat the rumour as interesting speculation, not fact, until both companies confirm it.

Be a part of the DaniWeb community

We're a friendly, industry-focused community of developers, IT pros, digital marketers, and technology enthusiasts meeting, networking, learning, and sharing knowledge.

Edit Preview