Tweets for Sale

According to a number of reports, Google and Facebook have both approached Twitter looking to buy the ever-expanding micro-blog site. It's pretty amazing that Twitter has come this far, this fast, although we tend to just expect it from companies these days. I still remember when Twitter surfaced, well we all do because it was four years ago. Everyone, and I mean everyone, wrote it off as just status updates from Facebook. I remember hearing, "Why do we need a company that just delivers Facebook posts?"

Well that company that just delivers Facebook posts now has a valuation near $10B. But everyone has to be asking themselves, why? First, we know that Twitter is much more than a micro-blog site, it's much more than Khardasian updates on shoes, Ochocinco smack talk and politicians selling books. What Twitter has a lot of is data. Not as much as Google, but it's different. Twitter has conversations, thoughts and opinions - it's real language. It's also a search database waiting to be tapped. Think about it, and not a mid-campaign optimization/listen to the buzz kind of way that marketers are trying to do right now. But next year, looking back at Super Bowl, what were people talking about, what were they saying? Minute by minute conversations, thoughts and opinions - a good number were even around the brands that tried to capture attention during the mega-event. That's where the value lies, that's what marketers should be thinking about tapping into and that is why Google and Facebook want it.

MyTake: Twitter isn't for sale and even if it was, there are maybe 3 or 4 companies that could actually buy it at this point. They are just starting to realize the scale that they need to become a major research and real-time data provider. We're going to see a lot more from Twitter before we see a lot less.