That doesn’t mean that it won’t sell, of course, but doesn’t sound like supporting evidence for the idea that Apple is about to buy Twitter. Sharon Gaudin at Computerworld:
Stone and co-founder Evan Williams were making an appearance on the morning talk show The View when host Barbara Walters asked about the recent flood of rumors that the likes of Apple, Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. all are vying to buy Twitter. Stone said, “No. We are not for sale.”
Owen Thomas of Valleywag has published a rumor which is both wildly entertaining and wildly improbable: Apple is supposedly in negotiations to buy Twitter for $700 million. What’s the alleged rationale? Well, Owen says that Apple is making dough as people snap up Twitter clients for the iPhone from the App Store. But A) it would take a heck of a lot of $2.99 copies of Tweetie to come up with $700 million; and B) as Owen points out, Apple will make money from Twitter clients whether or not it owns Twitter.
Owen goes on to theorize that Apple might covet Twitter in order to a make a statement about embracing openness and the Web. That seems like a pretty damn remote possibility. Apple does indeed buy companies, but it does so to become more like itself, not less so. (Good example: Its 2008 acquisition of PA-Semi, which will let it design its own chips and therefore gain more control over its products. Better example: Its 1996 acquisition of NeXT, which got it both a powerful OS and a new CEO with an outstanding resume for running Apple.)
People love to talk about Apple buying other famous companies. Sometimes they say that deals are in the works (although I wonder if any of the rumored transactions even reached the talking-it-over stage). Other times, they just wistfully hope that a deal might happen, or wonder what would transpire if it did.
Let’s review a dozen examples, shall we? After the jump, that is.
A happy May to you!
Swine flu tracking for iPhone.
The 240GB iPod upgrade option.
Twittering from the White House.
Apple’s next iPhone: Flip replacement?
Twitter administrator account gets hacked.
The military’s ultrasecure Windows XP.
Dell offers 120 laptop designs.
Guaranteed 100% swine flu-free:
Justice Dept. eyes Google Books.
Getting Twitter takes some patience.
Lots of new financial services.
Got a moment to get all nostalgic over old electronic equipment? Over on Twitter–where I’m @harrymccracken and a feed of all Technologizer stories is available at @technologizer–I tweeted thusly:
More than three dozen folks responded. Here’s the count of memorable computers by brand–two companies dominated:
Apple: 9
Commodore: 8 (no C64s, though–surprising!)
Homebuilt: 4
Atari: 3
IBM: 3
Sinclair: 2
Toshiba: 2
Radio Shack: 1 (hey, where were all the Tandy fanatics?)
Amstrad: 1
Compaq: 1
IMSAI: 1 (archaic!)
NeXT: 1 (classy!)
Osborne: 1
Packard Bell: 1
After the jump are all thirty-eight tweets (and Facebook messages) I got. If you weren’t one of the respondents, please chime in via comments… Continue Reading →
It’s sweltering in San Francisco…
Windows 7 Starter Edition’s okay.
More on Microsoft’s Europe case.
I want a million followers!
Pirate Bay: Guilty! Guilty! Guilty!
Annoy Amazon, lose Kindle books.
Report: Best Buy plans downloads.
Voting on Facebook policies begins.
Slim new Sidekick does Twitter.
Greetings to you from Malta…
Please, Apple, approve iPhone SlingPlayer.
TwitPic glitches frustrate, alarm users.
Should Apple fear Zune? Maybe.
Windows Mobile Zune? Also maybe.
Acer’s ultraslim, fairly cheap notebook.
Some of you may have heard about Aston Kutcher’s Twitter challenge to CNN: that he would punk Ted Turner if he beat the network to a million followers. That prompted network stalwart Larry King to shoot back at Kutcher in a funny-but-slightly-uncomfortable-to-watch video:
Well, here’s where we stand: EA’s now gotten into the action according to TechCrunch’s MG Siegler:
EA tweeted out earlier today that if Kutcher beats CNN to a million, it will put Kutcher’s 1 millionth follower in a future EA game. The Twitter community is bound to eat this up.
It gets better: EA later sweetened the pot even further, the game maker will now give that lucky Twitterer every single game made this year. So will Aston be able to do it?
Probably yes. As of Wednesday at 6:45pm ET, @cnnbrk has just short of 947,000 followers. @aplusk stands at about 915,000 followers. Aston has been gaining a couple thousand followers per hour, and a Twitter user has created a spreadsheet (wow, a lot of time on their hands) to calculate the time to 1 million.
If it’s right, Aston will reach the goal about 16 hours ahead of CNN sometime tomorrow afternoon. And somebody out there in Twitterland is going to be a very happy camper and a video game star.
In yet another installment from the crazy study department, research conducted by the Brain and Creativity Institute at the University of Southern California seems to suggest that twittering may lead to immorality. Remember that the next time you are trying to describe your feelings in 140 characters or less.
Before you say, “what the …”, let me explain their premise. Institute Director Antonio Damasio along with his research group argue that moral decision-making requires more time to ponder ones options. In this status-update driven world, that apparently doesn’t happen.
They set to prove their point by sharing stories that would invoke certain emotions with study participants. Brain scans indicated it was taking 6-8 seconds for those emotions to register.
From this I’m guessing Damasio and Co. inferred that the high speed inflow of information that status driven websites like Twitter just doesn’t give us enough time to properly feel an emotion about what we’re taking in.
USC media scholar Manuel Castells chimed in on PhysOrg, where the study originally appeared. “Lasting compassion in relationship to psychological suffering requires a level of persistent, emotional attention,” he reasons.
This has to be the oddest study I’ve seen in a long time. Whereas the Facebook study just seemed to state the obvious, this just seems to create unnecessary concern over the path society is taking.
Twitter was never meant to invoke emotion. It’s premise was to let people know what you are doing, or what is happening. Take natural disasters. When the tweets start rolling in, are these people suggesting there is no reaction at all to learning people have perished, or are in trouble?
Sorry, but this takes a huge leap of faith to believe we’ve become that callous.
One last point, I was discussing this with a friend, and he said “wow its kind of funny you’d take on neuroscientists.” Yes, these folks are smart. But I think the big issue here is that some type of problem with social media was inferred.
I know when I infer something that could be interpreted a multitude of ways, I am usually criticized by readers. How is this different?
