Google Buys Twitter? Chris O'Brien's 11 Predictions for 2011

http://www.mercurynews.com/business/ci_16930409

by almond • 16 years ago

35 23 16 years ago

cletus• 16 years ago

> 8. Venture capital blues: Expect both fundraising and investing to remain flat. While some firms will thrive, there's still an ongoing shakeout in this industry as the number of partners will continue to dwindle and returns will remain poor.

Huh? Is he in the same economy as me? Or is he deliberately excluding angel and other forms of seed I vesting, which are becoming an ever-increasing source of venture funding?

The big story here is that on the VC side there is a supply problem: meaning companies need less money. Valuations are going up as the money in the system competes for deals. An awful lot of companies can get profitable or acquired on seed investing alone.

As for Bartz going, it should happen and he's right why: she can't articulate what Yahoo is about.

Google buying Twitter? I doubt it. Not because Google doesn't want it but because Evan Williams has already sold Blogger to Google so a) he doesn't need the money and b) it didn't go that great. Twitter is hitting for the fences.

I can't see Facebook hitting 1 billion users this year. Facebook has the best of problems: it's running out of people to add to its service.

Tech IPOs: because of Sarbanes-Oxley and other factors the tech IPO in the US is basically dead except for the very biggest of companies. He contends none of these will IPO this year. I tend to agree. Typically you have 6+ months warning (through the rumor mill if nothing else) about a bi IPO, particularly with all the auditing required, so we're already running out of 2011 for that.

code_duck5• 16 years ago

I think that Google would very much like to acquire Twitter. They see their lack of success in the social area as a problem, and anyone - MS, Yahoo, facebook, etc. would love to own Twitter. The problem is as you note, Twitter doesn't seem at all interested in being acquired.

axod2• 16 years ago

I think the twitter hype has long peaked.

Could turn into another Digg.

RobbieStats• 16 years ago

Demand Media is going to be a big IPO and is scheduled for Jan/Feb.

sushi• 16 years ago

You said Big?

The company loses more money than it makes. How it it gonna be big?

adaugelli2• 16 years ago

The lack of IPOs in the market is more myth than fact:

From PWC:

With 154 IPOs completed, that raised a total of $37.5 billion year-to-date, 2010 activity represents a 123 percent increase in volume and 49 percent increase in value, compared with the $25.2 billion raised from 69 IPOs in 2009. In addition, PwC says the surge of activity in the fourth quarter of 2010 confirms the IPO market has recovered from the doldrums of 2008 and 2009.

Source:

http://www.pwc.com/us/en/press-releases/2010/us-ipo-market-v...

Specifically in tech:

Since the beginning of 2010, 37 technology companies have gone public, with total proceeds of $5.1 billion, according to Renaissance Capital, an IPO research firm. That's a big uptick from the same period last year, which saw 17 IPOs priced.

Source with top 10 IPOs of 2010:

http://www.thestreet.com/story/10928161/2/techs-top-ipos-of-...

Just because the big consumer names are choosing not to go public, does not mean that IPOs are not happening.

greut• 16 years ago

What about Jaiku?

scorpion0322• 16 years ago

"HR acquisition"

scorpion0322• 16 years ago

It depends on how well Google Me does.

If Google Me indeed takes off, as a social layer (on top of application and presentation layer), they could just make buzz more prominent.

But if it doesn't, which it may, considering Google's failed investments in Buzz, Wave, Me, investment to buy twitter would seem compelling.

elvirs• 16 years ago

There are two spheres on twitter, the first one is a broadcasting tool, its the accounts with large follower numbers broadcast their stuff, mostly its promotional stuff but it has a use too. They pay attention to the tweets where their username is mentioned and average joe whose voice was ignored now could make some big brand listen to him and resolve a problem if he has one. the other sphere is the chitchat region, where users with medium number of followers and follow decent number of people have conversations, most of that are retweets, which is just copies of someone's message, retweets are pointless but provide good statistics for trends and stuff. anyway, twitter is definitely useful because it is a large pool of current and latest information, but you need really good filtering tools to get what exactly you want, not unrelated noise. in terms of monetizing twitter is in trouble. they want to stick ads in those 140 characters? its going to be hard as long as the ads look like ads, but if they manage to learn about the user and his needs for that particular moment so they could serve ads that do not look like ads but are more the services that user needs at that point, then there is a bingo. and yeah about google, i dont think google should buy twitter, it does not fit, and google does not really need it. twitter would make a good company standalone.

look_lookatme• 16 years ago

I would like to see someone buy Twitter, if only to have a different set of engineers and product people tackle their issues. I find twitter search to be very useful in theory, but useless in practice. Mostly I get the "older tweets for <term> are unavailable" message.

If it takes an acquisition to make Twitter more useful, I'm all for it.

pluies2• 16 years ago

The expression is "without further ado", broadly standing for "without any more fuss", and not "without further adieu". "Adieu", borrowed from the French word for "farewell", doesn't make any sense at all in this context.

I know it's nitpicking and doesn't add a lot, but still. And I can't even post it on the website because it requires a facebook account. Blegh :(

cloudwalking• 16 years ago

If Twitter has no sustainable business model, I'm curious how Google is going to make money with it.

pluies2• 16 years ago

It wouldn't be the first time Google acquires an influential/"cool" business without a business model, à la YouTube (which apparently isn't actually profitable yet, years after it was created).

mikeryan• 16 years ago

I'd actually be really surprised if Groupon doesn't go public this year. Considering they just passed on Google's acquisition I don't think they're going to have a better time to go public then in the next year, before their brand gets too diluted with competitors. I think a lot of investors would also be very happy to get in on a hot new tech property like Groupon, as the economy inches back towards a recovery.

And a cloud bubble? Really its pretty damn obvious for the lsat year that cloud based services are damn hot right now, but a bubble? This one is barely just a prediction he's pretty much stating what is currently happening. He can declare victory on this "prediction" on Jan 1.

Google Buys Twitter? Chris O'Brien's 11 Predictions for 2011

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