Friday, April 10, 2009

Twitter mockery continues

Twitter’s owners should have sold out to Facebook for $500 million late last year when they had the chance.
In the five months since those talks broke down, Twitter has attracted a lot of users because of the buzz surrounding the microblogging service. And lately it’s attracted a lot of ridicule too.
Given the state of the economy right now, potential acquirers are likely to be very cautious anyway. But all the joking about Twitter is making it look like a fleeting fad.
While Twitter might have 6 million users by one recent count, it still hasn’t found a way to make money.
In a New York Times article last month, analysts with Sanford Bernstein said monetizing Twitter “would be difficult at best and likely unsuccessful.”
Twitter has the makings of a “value-destroying acquisition” for the purchaser, along the lines of eBay’s $4.1 billion acquisition of Skype, the article said.
The backlash against Twitter is in full swing. Garry Trudeau's Doonesbury comic strip, Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,” and political cartoonists are among those poking fun at the superficiality of Twitter.
Many people are getting “online sociability fatigue” and are backing away from social networks like Facebook, MySpace and Twitter, according to the Associated Press.
Politicalcartoons.com has a bunch of Twitter-themed funnies. Here are three of my favorites: the first from Mike Keefe of the Denver Post, the second from John Cole of the Scranton Times-Tribune and the third from Patrick Corrigan of the Toronto Star.

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