There, i said it. It is marked. I have been saying that for weeks on twitter and before the series C round happened with Benchmark and IVP i have had a private discussion with a very respected VC in the Israeli scene. He asked me who could buy twitter: i answered without a doubt Google. Why? John Battelle has today a post on he matter.
Twitter is a new generation tool for conversation but mainly for search and discovery which is Google's Business. I find for example myself asking more and more questions on Twitter and getting very high quality answers. Things Google would never be able to bring me, even if i was investing half an hour of expert search. Like i said Twitter is the best Q&A service
Some say it is a threat to Google, i think this is ridiculous. You don t change a mindset and a reflex just like that. But it is a great complementary service. I would love to see my Gmail split in 2 parts with my mail on one side and Twitter on the other. Twitter is already occupying a big part of my email with alerts, notification and upcoming Topify.com (disclosure a service i have been working on) and other gadgets. This would be just the logical evolution of the email as a social dashboard
But twitter would be a must addition to Google open social and Google Android. The recently acquired Jaiku was dead the day it was acquired because it just did not have the community traction, one other thing Google can't ignore.
So the question is not "if" but "when". Probably not in the next 6 months. I assume the moment they start to push their business model (probably search related), Things will heat up. And even if the founders declare they won't sell, it is always difficult to resist the temptations of a big check.
Let's see what happens
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