Twitter co-founder Biz Stone (his real name is Isaac) was on Stephen Colbert last week. Kara Swisher:
Stone–the spokesmodel for the hot microblogging service–does very well and is even charming, even though Colbert nails the problems of the San Francisco-based Twitter cold in the lively interview.
“How would you make money?” asked Colbert, after some preliminary joking with Stone about Twitter’s 140-character limit.
When Stone went on about how Twitter planned to be a “strong, profitable, independent company,” Colbert was ready with a zinger.
“You and Pets.com.”
Rumors have been going around that Google is in talks to buy Twitter. The Guardian quotes vice president of Gartner research, Jeff Mann:
“The culture and ambitions of Twitter and Google match,” he said. “The Twitter founders sold Blogger to Google earlier and work on the same principle of build first, monetise later. Other tie-ins short of an acquisition could make sense, but would be harder to sustain since Twitter already uses such open interfaces.
“It will be hard to do something that others can’t replicate. Now is the time for Twitter to sell. It is at the top of its hype range now. Monetising on its own would be a long, hard slog.”
The top of the hype range indeed! Michael Arrington late yesterday afternoon:
New sources say that Google is interested in acquiring Twitter, and has had talks with the company about a deal. Google’s internal valuation, however, would value the company at a token premium above Twitter’s last round of financing valuation, around $250 million. Some Twitter insiders want the deal, but our sources say CEO Evan Williams wouldn’t sell even for $1 billion. […]
Would Google pay more than $1 billion for Twitter? No idea. But there’s no way Microsoft lets a deal be negotiated without putting its bid in, too. And if these two giants see Twitter as the future of search, $1 billion is peanuts.
Back in February Forbes looked at Twitter’s analytics business model:
Twitter is developing a range of analytics and metrics products and services built around the information contained in “tweets,” the e-mail and text messages that pass through its platform. “We can measure the tweets,” he says. “We’re trying to figure out what are the appropriate metrics around engagement and how to convey those.”
Thau, however, didn’t say when Twitter plans to sell these services or how much it will charge for them.
Meanwhile, TechCrunch’s Erick Schonfeld says Colbert was weak last night. He liked The Daily Show’s Twitter take better. I liked them both. So Jon and Samantha are after the jump.