Ten Companies Twitter Should Consider Acquiring Next
If you were a little blue bird, with a good pile of money and a whole lot of hype, what would you buy to spice up your nest? There are so many little services being built on top of Twitter that we wouldn't be surprised to see some more of them acquired by the company soon. That would mean more features for everyday users and more usefulness for features loved by loyal early adopters.
Twitter has acquired two other companies so far, that we know of. Search engine and sentiment analysis service Summize became Twitter's own search engine and Values of N sold its assets so engineer Rael Dornfest could be brought into the company. Here are ten other startups we think that Twitter should consider acquiring next. Which kind of company would you most like to see become part of Twitter itself? We've got a poll below.
Is Twitter in a position to make more acquisitions? We suspect so. It has cash but more importantly it has stock. Think of it this way: Google is afraid of Facebook and Facebook is afraid of Twitter. Would startups bend over backwards to become a part of Twitter? We suspect most would.
Some of these we think are likely acquisitions, some less so. In making this list we considered both functionality that would be helpful to have added to Twitter's own site and technology that would be worth buying instead of just building in-house. Whenever a platform company builds technology that a number of other startups offer, there is a risk of scaring other people away from investing in development that the platform could just reproduce. Acquisitions of startups on a platform probably increase the appeal of development though, as it's a chance to get in on the game.
Quite Likely, if It Hasn't Happened Already
Bit.ly is the most full-featured and popular URL shortener on the market right now and was recently selected as Twitter's own shortener of choice, dethroning TinyURL. Bit.ly offers all kinds of smart analytics, from real-time click tracking to semantic analysis of topic keywords from the links that people tweet.
One trusted industry source speaking on the condition of anonymity told us that Bit.ly servers "were moved into Twitter's racks months ago in preparation for this change" [of becoming the default shortener]. Bit.ly is becoming too important to Twitter to keep that functionality outside the company's own shop and the two companies share some investors. We will not be surprised at all if a Bit.ly acquisition by Twitter is announced sometime in the near future.
Could Happen...
Tweetmeme is another fast growing Twitter analytics service that tracks sharing on the service. With another chunk of new features just added today, the service is looking a whole lot like "Feedburner for Twitter" but with even more viral distribution possibilities. The Tweetmeme API is quite interesting and could complement Bit.ly quite well.
Twitpic is a popular way to share images on Twitter. The site faces a strong challenge from ImageShack's YFrog, but independent Twitpic would be a cheaper acquisition and is already well known among Twitter users. (Twitter should probably look at Enjoysthin.gs; it's got the best user experience.) An increase in imagery on Twitter would probably offer the company a lot more advertising real-estate.
Tweepz is a fascinating Twitter search engine that acts like a directory that lets you parse your results using various metrics gleaned from Twitter. Check out this search, for example. Twitter could benefit from making this kind of search available to users, advertisers and researchers - and Tweepz has already built it. See also Twazzup, another company doing interesting things with Twitter data.
Longer Shots
An iPhone app company could be a good buy for Twitter; there's certainly plenty of options. M.Twitter.com is a good mobile service already but someone specializing in super high-quality Twitter apps for the iPhone, Android and Pre could be good to bring in house. It could be AteBits, makers of Tweetie. There may not be enough reason for Twitter to buy one of these companies, though.
A desktop Twitter app company could help Twitter increase user engagement. Many of the most serious Twitter users (though not all) swear by desktop access. Twitter could acquire the most popular and arguably most innovative desktop app, Tweetdeck, or it could bring Seesmic in house. Tweetdeck would be cheap and shares investors with Twitter. Desktop apps may be too limited in appeal to be a compelling acquisition target.
Geo-location could be a good feature to add to Twitter. Search by user location could be made much more meaningful and the list of things that could be done with it is very long. Brightkite is popular and well developed, Shizzow is pretty and wouldn't be expensive. On the other hand, browsers themselves will likely all become more location aware in the near future and Twitter may be satisfied with its current location data.
A semantics company could bring structure to the Tweets, making them more useful and easier to advertise against. Right now links Tweeted are semantically analyzed by Reuters' Calais and sent to Bit.ly, but we wouldn't be surprised if Twitter was interested in scooping up a small semantics shop and helping it scale so that analysis was being done in house. Twitter may feel like semantics don't need to get that close to consumer users, though. (Disclosure, Calais is a ReadWriteWeb sponsor.)
Topify is a widely loved service that intercepts your new Twitter follower notification emails and sends you much more useful ones. It's great but probably too easy for Twitter to just reproduce itself.
FriendFeed plus Twitter would be a match made in heaven. It would be an engineering powerhouse. It would be a step towards mainstream user adoption of FriendFeed, a service that can't make up its mind which end of the sophistication spectrum it's targeting. It's also quite unlikely to happen. If there's one related startup we can imagine turning down a Twitter acquisition offer, it's probably FriendFeed. (Though the investment-laden and highly ambitious OneRiot is a close second.) Nonetheless, it would be awesome if FriendFeed's cross-network aggregation, threaded conversations, groups, media support, search and more joined forces with Twitter.
Ultimately, it may be most likely that Twitter's next acquisition will be something vapid. A service that aggregates shopping Tweets, or celebrity Tweets, or something else that will fall short of taking advantage of the Twitter platform's huge potential to change the world. Twitter staff makes relatively simple use of its own service, so hoping that it will acquire companies that make it all the more powerfully sophisticated may be an early adopter's pipe dream. [Update: After some discussion this afternoon, I am thinking it's time to reconsider this position I've held for some time. Twitter staff is not full of dummies, I'm sure, and it has probably been inappropriate of me to write as if that's the case.]
Maybe not, though. We wouldn't be shocked to see Twitter pick up at least a few of the companies above. What do you think? Are there other services you'd like to see become part of the Twitter team even more than the above? It's a wild and woolly micro-content ecosystem out there - anything could happen.
You can find ReadWriteWeb on Twitter, as well as the entire RWW Team: Marshall Kirkpatrick, Bernard Lunn, Alex Iskold, Sarah Perez, Frederic Lardinois, Doug Coleman, Jolie O'Dell, Dana Oshiro , Lidija Davis and Steven Walling.
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What about Twitterfeed??
"...Twitter's next acquisition will be something vapid."
lulz!
I would buy Tweetdeck
Posted by: arjo
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July 3, 2009 12:38 PM
OH and dear Twitter: please do not buy Friendfeed :-)
Posted by: arjo
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July 3, 2009 12:39 PM
What about the NYT? :-)
Posted by: terrycojones.myopenid.com
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July 3, 2009 12:39 PM
Arjo, if Twitter things to become a little less innovative and progressive then they would buy Friendfeed, but I am not sure they would risk the investment!!
Posted by: Josh Chandler
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July 3, 2009 12:40 PM
Gregory, that's a very wise suggestion. When I wrote this list I think I finally came to terms, subconsciously, with the fact that I'm not that into Twitterfeed. It's cool, but I'd rather see Twitter bring any of the above in house. I like real tweets and I cannot lie, you other twitter users can't deny - when a tweet walks in with an author's voice, ear for replies, you get... ;)
i don't see any specific urgency for twitter to acquire any of those companies. in the end they're only moving or remodeling data they already own and/or add only substitutable value such as media hosting.
Thomas, the same could be said about Summize, could it not? Additionally, I think a number of these are dealing in data that is becoming a Twitter "asset" yet is not owned by Twitter. Bit.ly, for example. Also, I think it would be cool if Twitter acquired some of these companies - it would breathe new life into their awesomeness and we'd all get to see things like semantic analysis done on a larger scale.
You have to weigh up the return on investment.
tweetdeck would cost them a lot and I think it would be cheaper for them to build in house and then advertise it on their site.
i think the summize deal came at a time when twitter was in a quite different operational mode than it is today; not talking of investor-related reasons which happen to be the same with bit.ly, correct?
Seesmic has access to deep pocketed investors. They could buy up and aggregate/integrate some of the above mentioned complementary companies and then flip the "enhanced" Seesmic company/platform to twitter. Saves twitter time digesting multiple direct acquisitions (i.e. pre-digested integration) and would certainly enhances the Seesmic valuation. For that matter, Atomico could throw Joost into the Seesmic mix for good measure ;)
how can I not like that?
Posted by: Nick Halstead
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July 3, 2009 1:13 PM
I believe they should start acquiring the best mobile apps for each platform, great way to monetize...
Very good list. My order and purchase order (if I owned the company), would be:
1) Bit.ly
2) Topify
3) Cotweet or PeopleBrowsr, would prefer owning the higher end corporate usage.
4) A real search engine with sentiment analysis of some degree of sophistication for marketing users.
5) An e-mail and SMS provider.
6) A light-weight CRM solution.
I think Twitter, if it plays it's cards right, could own the next generation of social marketing. It is missing a lot of pieces but has a great user base, reasonably solid delivery platform, and could build from there.
John
http://twitter.com/JohnFMoore
Bit.Ly seems like an any day now sort of thing, but if we're talking about Twitter's long term success, Brightkite would be an amazing pickup.
Hell, if I had the cash, I'd pick up brightkite. The fact is, mobile social is where everything is going, so why reinvent the wheel when you can pick up a great start-up like that?
While just about all of these acquisition targets seem plausible and might even make long-term sense for Twitter as a company, my take on this article (and most of the comments above) is that it's stepping around the elephant in the room: Twitter's incredible lack of stability and robustness. Granted, few companies have ever had to scale this much this fast, but I think it's a HUGE mistake for them to focus on biz dev rather than blocking and tackling. As I've said in tweets, it appears to me, from the outside, that biz dev concerns and developers/consultants, rather than operational robustness, dominate within the company.
Barriers to entry for what Twitter does are actually not that high, and, as with Friendster, I could see them losing it all if they can't keep the lights on. Those that doubt what I say should monitor the #twitterfail timeline for a few days.
I think Twitter needs to focus on who is going to buy them.
Hashtags.org!!! So that I can again follow hashtags as I follow people, and not have to follow them from a search. C'mon Twitter. Make this happen! Hashtags.org needs your help!
I think a service like Mr. Tweet would be a good acquisition. Increasingly, people need to rely on more than the follower/following ratio. A recommendation engine / rating system would be a good addition to Twitter's core services.
Joe, I think you're right. MrTweet could have been on this list as well.
I'm not sure why "something else that will fall short of taking advantage of the Twitter platform's huge potential to change the world" was crossed-out of the discussion.
Twitter has only been able to reatain 40% of new users from one month to the next... and that's not sustainable. There obviously has to be something lacking, and I'm guessing it lies in the idea of "tweeting" itself. Millions of Americans refuse to use Twitter simply because they refuse to "tweet" to "tweeple". It has become in many circles, a joke.
Most people deem what they have to say as being too important to "tweet", or as incapable of being expressed significantly in a 140 word blurb. These people and their associated enactments of free speech await a platform built specifically for them, a place where every person will have a Personal Free Speech Platform.
www.My1stAmendment.com. America's Free Speech, officially personified.
I expect Twitter to buy me (or actually, my application..) - tFeeder it's an RSS reader but with a twist - stories are ranked by retweets (from Tweetmeme API).
It focuses on technology blogs right now, and lets you view the hottest (hot in terms of retweets) technology stories of the past 24 hours, past 30 days etc. You can also easily filter stories (show only google stories, iPhone stories and my favorite: show only NON-Twitter stories..).
It also compares the best writers and blogs in terms of avg. retweets per post.
Yes, I'm a target for acquisition too!!
http://rsstfeeder.appspot.com/
Why would Twitter even consider acquiring any of these companies if they're already doing for Twitter what they would do anyway? (Except that these companies pick up the tab, instead of Twitter)
If you want to tweet directly from your web browser try out CloudBerry Lab twitter plug-in for IE and FF. You can tweet the text from the page with a click of the button and attach the link to the source page http://twitter.cloudberrylab.com/ I would be happy if twitter acquires our small product ;-)
hmmm...
should check out http://urtak.com
the bizarro twitter
it's more about the questions than the blather.
rock on
Is the other way, they should be acquired, otherwise, they should think how to make revenue, the hype won't last that much
Great sweep of the key pieces of the Twitter ecosystem. The gem statement is "FriendFeed plus Twitter would be a match made in heaven".
Other than that, if Twitter acquires any other firms mentioned, it would put them in competition with companies in similar segments.
The innovative apps are all coming on top of Twitter, and deriding Twitter itself from owning these. E.g. Search, Browsing, Desktops, etc. are all in the hands of others (ref my post "Twitter as an Innovation Engine" http://bit.ly/CSJa3. So, Twitter will be relegated as a utility, but a damn important one.
I guess that one of the biggest company could be TwitVid (http://twitvid.com). Video+Twitter is a winning bet.
Interesting quote from Sir Marsh-A-Llot: "I like real tweets and I cannot lie, you other twitter users can't deny - when a tweet walks in with an author's voice, ear for replies..."
Posted by: Alberto Saavedra
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July 5, 2009 12:42 PM
It's probably almost better for twitter to not acquire the apps that run it. The apps do well enough on their own, and they all generate a lot of buzz (traffic) on popular tech blogs *cough* *cough*
Marshall,
I think Status Search, a social graph search engine might be a nice fit to their real time search engine
http://www.louisgray.com/live/2009/07/status-search-queries-updates-from-your.html
Marshall, to be clear, the above comment by "Louis Gray" was not left by me. I was asleep at 2:36 a.m. Pacific Time. I don't mind the commenter linking to the article, but I would not have suggested they be an acquisition target for Twitter (at least yet).
* I signed in with Facebook Connect to prove this is me, rather than just filling out a form.
Hi Marshall--
Great article. One question-- i don't think i quite understood what Calais is doing with the links via Bit.ly? What's going on there? why are they semantically processing them? i don't think i quite understand what the output of this is and/or who is then using the info of what the link is about?
Any further info. on this would be much appreciated.
Thanks!
i just removed a needlessly cruel jab at Seesmic from this post http://bit.ly/l6HVT sorry @loic y'all didn't deserve that [from http://twitter.com/marshallk/statuses/2460329369]
Posted by: Marshall Kirkpatrick
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July 16, 2009 9:51 AM
Nowadays a lot of people use Twitter to chat or have conversations based on in-reply-to's or mentions, though there were some attempts to create such apps. the only one doing a good job in that area is an app called Bettween (http://bettween.com).
Though this app is quite slow, I imagine if Twitter buys it, it might increase the performance and create another niche for Twitter.
please stay away from simply beautiful urtak
What about twogger ?
Bit.ly is my favourite tracker for links! Dont understand why some people compaints...