Selling Twitter

I noticed last night that rumors are going around about who is and is not likely to buy Twitter.

Google? What on earth would Google want with Twitter? Google has goggle+, hangouts, etc. They are doing Twitter the (more-or-less) right way already, and they have no particular need of Twitter's customer base.

The brand name, and that's about it, but would it be worth anything close to the asking price to Google?

Yahoo?

I could see that. Maybe. But they would have to take a very cautious organizational approach about integrating it with what they already have, while taking a very aggressive approach about re-developing the technology.

Re-developing the technology, not just bringing it in. The user interface seems to be somewhat valuable. The technology substrate, not so much.

Would I buy Twitter if I had the money?

I would need the asking price, enough money to maintain it somewhat better than life support for about three years, and several hundred million more for skunkworks projects to develop a useful infrastructure too hang the brand on.

Infrastructure?

To make Twitter a first-class ISP: connection, website and blog hosting, mail, for starters. And, because I think basically every ISP in existence is falling down on the job, I would add private subdomains, static IPv6 address blocks, and other no-brainers that are missing in the current market.

And offer a branded open source mail client or two, to help the customers get free of the Microsoft Outlook that is such a restrictive point of view.

Oh. And, of course, offer a branded custom Linux OS and a branded BSD derivative, along with direct support for general open source OSses.

Not just offer it to the customers, but actively encourage them to switch from the current market-leader-which-needs-not-be-named. Gotta attack the underlying problems in our information infrastructure.

Basically, the only value Twitter would have for me is the brand and the customer base.

Of course, I don't have access to that kind of money.

(Billions of dollars?

That's not real money of the same sort that I pay rent with.

It's a proxy for value in a different dimension, and I don't exist in that dimension. Don't think I want to, for all the wars that go on in that dimension.

Sure, re-doing our information infrastructure and doing it right this time would be fun, but I'd first have to find a way to protect myself from the warfare.

War is stupid, and not for making people happy, even if the weaponry is money instead of bombs.)

(Not for making people happy == hell, okay?)