Josh Bernoff recently posted a quick overview of the main predictions from Emily Riley and the Groundswell team at Forrester.
What struck me is the fourth prediction in the list: ‘Twitter will become profitable or get acquired’. Well, by now (see yesterday’s post) we know that Twitter is slightly profitable, but of course there’s a huge difference between being just above break-even and being truly profitable.
So let’s look at the possibility of an acquisition. Who would possibly acquire Twitter? Google, Facebook or Microsoft? Those are the three companies Forrester is thinking about. I see other possibilities, do you?
Furthermore, will Twitter remain the king in micro-blogging? Sometimes I really get fed up with Twitter to be honest. It’s getting quite spammy out there.
To whoever wants to follow me on Twitter: no, I am not interested in tools to rapidly increase my list of followers. I prefer 50 good followers that find my content valuable and following 200 myself that tweet good stuff, I don’t care about the follow/followed ratio, and I don’t want to buy your software.
Anyway, back to Forrester. Why do they think Twitter might be acquired in 2010? Let me quote Bernoff: “Twitter has been fiddling around, growing like mad without a business model, for years now. But in in 2010, growth is not sufficient. One of two things will happen. Either Twitter will have a business generating $100 million at an annualized rate by the end of 2010, or it’s going to get bought by the likes of Google, Facebook, or Microsoft. I don’t believe it can continue as a huge force that has no visible means of support”.
What do you think?
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