Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Y Google should bye Twitter

Y Google should bye Twitter


During twitter harvest times especially during lunch hour and morning rush we always get messate  "Twitter is over capacity. Too many tweets! Please wait a moment and try again." which has bugged twitters all over the world. The microblogging service is simply not able to keep up.

The problem is obvious: Twitter kicked in the nitrous oxide a couple of months ago and has quintupled in popularity since late December, according to statistics from Google (Nasdaq: GOOG). Twitter isn't really making money yet, and its popularity has brought its server farm to its knees. Hardware is expensive. So is internet bandwidth, when you're dealing with millions of hyperconnected users.

I can think of a few ways Twitter can remedy this problem and return to the silky-smooth instant-broadcasting performance to which its users have grown addicted:

  • Shovel more hardware into Twitter's data centers, which are managed by an American subsidiary of Japanese telecom giant Nippon Telegraph & Telephone (NYSE: NTT). This takes time, and NTT may not have the extra rackspace available immediately. And besides, how would Twitter pay for the new machines? Nope, scratch this idea.
  • Move into a massive-scale hosting service like Amazon.com's (Nasdaq: AMZN) Elastic Computing Cloud. Amazon has the hardware muscle and ultraconnectivity that Twitter needs, and EC2 can also be cheaper than having your own hardware. Sun Microsystems (Nasdaq: JAVA) will open a similar service later this year, and other giants will probably follow, but that doesn't really help today. This one is plausible, but may require lots of reprogramming before Twitter's software will fit this new environment.
  • Let some deep-pocketed sugar daddy with lots of Internet-facing infrastructure of its own step in and buy Twitter. Under the wing of Google, Facebook, or Amazon, Twitter could get back on its feet quickly, and go back to growing as fast as it might like. Lacking funds won't be a problem anymore.

Of all these options, Google buying Twitter makes the most sense to me. Google clearly has the traffic-handling muscle to handle anything Twitter's users might throw at it, and it's an established leader in distributing complex computing loads across a very flexible infrastructure.

Twitter runs on venture capital right now, having raised at least $55 million from firms like Benchmark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners. Those stakeholders would clearly want a large return on their investment, and Twitter might sell for as much as $1 billion.

Google is on the short list of potential buyers who could afford that kind of splurging on an exciting but revenueless business today. And that attitude is in Big G's genes, too. Microsoft(Nasdaq: MSFT) would want a profitable business plan on the table first, and Apple (Nasdaq:AAPL) doesn't buy much of anything. Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO) is both rich enough and curious enough to do it, but seems more interested in high-bandwidth video services than lower-volume text applications.

Just buy Twitter already, Google. The little birdie needs your help.


By Anders Bylund 

4 comments:

7rex said...

very true ... there is no revenue stream for twitter ... its going to be a rough road without big money.

any clue their monthly bandwidth and sms costs?

Bhupendra said...

Is it intentional that you mentioned "bye" and not "buy"??

Great article. Good depth and vision.

Bhupendra

rohit said...

oh yea im for cloud computing... gmail wrks on tat & we've never faced any issues

Anonymous said...

म एडम्स KEVIN, Aiico बीमा plc को एक प्रतिनिधि, हामी भरोसा र एक ऋण बाहिर दिन मा व्यक्तिगत मतभेद आदर। हामी ऋण चासो दर को 2% प्रदान गर्नेछ। तपाईं यस व्यवसाय मा चासो हो भने अब आफ्नो ऋण कागजातहरू ठीक जारी हस्तांतरण ई-मेल (adams.credi@gmail.com) गरेर हामीलाई सम्पर्क। Plc.you पनि इमेल गरेर हामीलाई सम्पर्क गर्न सक्नुहुन्छ तपाईं aiico बीमा गर्न धेरै स्वागत छ भने व्यापार वा स्कूल स्थापित गर्न एक ऋण आवश्यकता हो (aiicco_insuranceplc@yahoo.com) हामी सन्तुलन स्थानान्तरण अनुरोध गर्न सक्छौं पहिलो हप्ता।

व्यक्तिगत व्यवसायका लागि ऋण चाहिन्छ? तपाईं आफ्नो इमेल संपर्क भने उपरोक्त तुरुन्तै आफ्नो ऋण स्थानान्तरण प्रक्रिया गर्न
ठीक।