Apple rumored to be interested in purchasing Twitter

This is rumor control, here are the facts: Apple has little web development product history. Twitter is sorely in need of a sugar daddy. And Gawker has posted unconfirmed reports that Apple is in late stage negotiations to buy Twitter for $700 million.

This is spawning numerous debates this morning, most of them of the, "does Apple deserve Twitter?" variety, which as any adult could tell you is about as silly as asking if the two of them would be happy together.

The idea that Apple would want Twitter as the backbone for iPhone apps makes some sense when trying to make this story make sense, even if Twitter is already free to app developers anyway. So many iPhone apps rely not on Twitter-like services, but on Twitter specifically. If Twitter - famous for being something everyone wants to use but no one wants to pay money for - were to suddenly disappear, iPhone toys like Tweetsville, iTweets, Twittelator, and Gyazickr (an iPhone/Twitter application which inexplicably does not cutely infuse "tweet" or "twitter" into it's name, the spoilsport,) would be rendered useless.

Personally, if this is true, I hope Apple manages to keep its hands off of Twitter as an operating entity. Not that there's a whole lot they could do to louse up 140 characters per message. The nice thing about Twitter is it's purity - you get to leave one message at a time, no attachments, only links, 140 characters.

Maybe they'll just put one of those dial buttons on it.

About the Author: Eric Reid

I am the Social Media Services Manager for Off Madison Ave. I've been with the company since 2006, when I was hired to do SEO, and link building in particular. When social networking sites started cropping up, at first I started using them to create backlinks - but they weren't the best for that, given all of the "nofollow" attributes. However, I did see the potential for all of the direct referral traffic they represent. Since then I've been actively pursuing both tactics for clients: Links that can help them for search, and social postings that get them involved in the conversation. It's about the coolest job you could ever get. ;)

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5 comments so far

William says:

While I'd love for this to be true, if this rumor started at Gawker it is almost certainly an unfounded rumor.

Chris Rierson says:

That would be horrible if they did! Open source, meet your new master Corporate Secrecy

Eric Reid says:

Well Gawker DID manage to get both Tom Cruise's weird Scientology video and Sarah Palin's e-mail, so they aren't without their sources. It certainly has more validity as a story than if I simply came out myself and said I think Apple is going to buy Twitter.

It's even entirely possible this story is Twitter's own way of floating it out into the public to see what reaction would be.

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Waiting for a reply 8-), Socrates.

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