I was just reading a GigaOm article titled, “Should Apple Buy Twitter?”
It likely comes as no surprise to you that I’m shocked Twitter is still around. While I love it and spend a good amount of time on it, I have no idea how they’re surviving.
Yes, they were just valued at $9 billion. Yes, they have tons of funding. But a company that hasn’t made a cent in their entire six years? I don’t get it.
Did we not learn our lesson in the dot com bubble? Eyeballs don’t always equate profits.
But now there is speculation Apple could buy the social networking giant with some of their cash reserves (it’s also said they have so much money, they could buy Facebook and Research In Motion).
But Apple is a computer company. One that has had laser focus since Steve Jobs retook the helm in the 90s. One that knows what they do and doesn’t try to be all things to all people.
So why would they try to be a social network, too?
This all started with Barry Ritholtz who said:
Apple does software and hardware really well; they do the integration between the two outstandingly. But they haven’t really done Social particularly well . . . Twitter automagically makes Apple a defactoplayer in social. Apple’s biggest competitors over the next decade are not HP or Dell or even Microsoft — they are more likely to be Google and Facebook.
I don’t agree. That’s like McDonald’s saying they need to open white tablecloth restaurants. Or Starbucks wanting to get into beer and wine (oh wait).
We’ve seen it time and time again. A company gets big and greedy so they start to go after similar industries, and lose focus on what they do really well. Then they begin to lose profits and, in some cases, cease to exist.
Apple does do hardware and software really well. Let them keep doing that. Let them keep changing our lives by bringing us iPods and iPhones and iPads and iTVs and whatever iOtherThings we haven’t even imagined yet.
Let them create a strategic alliance with Twitter, if it’s so important they go social, and also do the same with Facebook and Pinterest and, heck, even MySpace, if they want to. That way they don’t pigeon hole themselves into one social network, they can focus on what they do best, and they become a social company.
Or…they can invest in Spin Sucks Pro. You know. Just because.