The blogosphere, ezines, and social media networks, have been blogging, printing, and twittering over the last week or two in regards to news that Google is close to making an offer for Twitter. Too many authors have been getting dinged for jumping on the band-wagon; don’t believe the Google purchase of Twitter hype! Authors are commenting that they should sell, sell, sell, for any amount that Google offers. What are all of the “rumored” offers?
So far, I’ve seen Twitter offer amounts numbering Two Hundred and Fifty Million, Five Hundred Million, or One Billion? Read all of the articles regarding this matter, and and you’ll find one word in common with all of them, they state that it is a “rumored offer” or simply just a “rumor”.
I have been reading article after article, and have analyzed all of their arguments. Amazingly enough, even after information from a reliable source within Twitter was released stating that “There was a discussion [Google executive Marissa Mayer's] group about real-time search and about product stuff. It was a couple weeks ago. It was very preliminary…and that was that.” and another source stating: “Seriously, no negotiations, no deal, nada.”, the internet chatter of a Google purchase of Twitter is still a-buzzing! So why, if reliable sources are stating to the contrary, are so many internet authors and bloggers still fueling these “Google purchase of Twitter” fires?
Let’s review their arguments:
1) There is no real value in Twitter, so sell while Google’s buying!
So many people have criticized Twitter’s fast rising success, attributing it to good marketing and having public attraction from its newness and public hype, and are stating that it will be short-lived. Several authors state that the “messages are short, and often-times pointless”, or “That it’s full of trivial rubbish”. However, sometimes people simply appreciate a little brevity in life. The tremendous success and current use of “Leet Speak” on the internet is an excellent example of this fact. Being capable of expressing a complete thought or group of thoughts within 140 characters is not a sign of a lack of intelligence, but of analytical and interpretive intelligence.
2) Twitter is holding onto an idealistic fantasy.
The argument that Twitter is trying to avoid reality is preposterous. Twitter is realism, twenty-four hours a day, and it is as social impacting or as mundane as the person chooses. If a person wants to share their personal insights or experiences, they can. If a person wants to try to change the world 140 characters at a time, they can. If you want to educate or share information with anyone who wants to read it, you can! There are no filters, only that you choose to “listen” to what each particular person has to say. Yes, there will be some insincerity present. However, when is it not present in our lives? You have to filter through the B.S. and choose who is sincere, and who isn’t. Then, you simply give the insincere people the boot by stopping to follow them, or block them altogether!
3) Twitter has no value as a business to customer interface.
Ok. Really… Who the heck was dumb enough to even start this argument. Twitter allows brief SMS-like communications between two entities, whether that be a person or an organization. In fact, companies have been using SMS interfaces for customer notification and advertising for some time now. Now, let’s say you create a Twitter feed for your company. You then, take all of the Twitter feeds to your company profile, consisting of complaints and suggestions, and feed them into a server for storage. Next, you analyze the content of the tweets for keyword content, and then categorize and group them together for analysis. You now have a pretty effective analytical tool that allows you to know what your customers are thinking about, how many of them are thinking about the same thing, as well as how much of those thoughts are addressed by the projects and issues your employees are currently working on, or not working on!
Hence, all issues that are related to a particular issue, or error, that your people are working on, can be associated to that trouble-ticket, and then the sending users can be Twittered once the issue is resolved! People with SMS configured for Twitter will then get a notification on their cell phone that the issue is resolved. Or, if a user twitters a question, issue, or a suggestion, and there are several possible matches on your FAQ, Current Issues, or New Features pages, you can send them a Twitter message containing a URL which takes them to the page(s) which relates the most to their Tweet. Thus, saving them the time of searching through your FAQ or Support site manually and countless amounts of their time.Both of these scenarios just potentially saved your company tons of money by limiting the number of support staff you need to run your business due to ensuring that multiple people are not working the same issues. You also just increased customer satisfaction by ensuring that high visibility issues are addressed first, and that they get the fastest notification possible to their questions, suggestions, and issues. During these tight times, both benefits would be extremely valuable for any company. Plus, real time notification, from businesses to their customers, on the status of any business transactions is another possibility within Twitter. All of these values, plus the Advertising and Marketing potential that Twitter has to reach your customers and to reach potential future customers, makes corporate involvement within Twitter as certain as death and taxes, and as valuable as they choose it to be.
TWITTER’S VALUE
Twitter’s value is based upon information. Because you can be selective with whom you receive that information from, you have a direct influence upon the amount and quality of the information which you receive. Plus, due to the limited content which profiles are allowed to transmit, it is much easier for Twitter users to discern between the proverbial B.S. and actual valuable information – in seconds!The fact that Twitter is transforming a non-monetized business model to a monetized business model after the fact is not an issue. Several people have hinted that doing so leads to imminent failure. However, what these writers don’t know is that almost every highly successful internet venture in its beginning phases were non-monetized at one phase or another (iMesh and Napster are two examples). It is essential to do so in order to see whether or not the project takes to the public or not. You design it with monetizing in mind, after all you are a company whose goal is profit. However, there is no point in spending the money to monetize an application or website, before you know that you have the millions of users necessary to find significant success!
This decision is dependent upon which school of business that the creators come from, and who their direct influences are when it comes to thinking towards future and final success. The truth is, if you build it and the people use it, the money will come. The amount of success that is found is totally dependent upon the vision of the owners, and how well they design the monetizing features within the site or application’s usage. More importantly, how well they design it to fit within the business model of possible buyers as well. Ensuring your site or application is the most unique in its creation, or at least of the highest quality when it comes to your competitors, ensures your future success and the value of your product.
SELLING NOW IS A MISTAKE
Selling Twitter to Google now is not only a mistake, but a joke. The potential value of Twitter goes far beyond what it would currently be valued at for a sale. Twitter could be worth so much more a few years down the road. Solving the infrastructure issues, and designing real-time search interface capability for Google and other search engines, would take Twitter to an all new level in the industry. Also, working more directly with businesses, and helping them to find the highest value out of their Twitter usage, would give Twitter even more leverage when it comes to selling their site to potential buyers in the future by attracting more businesses.
All of these solutions are changes that could be implemented in the next two to three years, and would triple or quadruple Twitter’s overall value. By then, their user base will have increased significantly as well. Plus, they may have even added more advertising functionality within Twitter for businesses using Twitter for customer notification and consumer education.
All in all, selling now will only ensure that the buyer reaps all of the benefits that Twitter owners could have seen, as well as the increased money that they could have received in a future sale of Twitter. In summation, with selling Twitter now, each and every one of them would be kicking themselves 5 years down the road when they begin to see the financial earnings reports being released to the press from Google, or any other buyer.
Author: Jason E Cloninger Article Source: EzineArticles.com
© 2012, ©Active Consultants 2011. All rights reserved. Copying in part or in entirety only permitted by written consent
Republished by Blog Post Promoter