It would give Amazon an opportunity to expand its technology/media empire – and stick it to Donald Trump. What's not to like?
Amid all the predictions and pontificating around the New Year, investor Howard Lindzon had an intriguing thought: Amazon will buy Twitter.
It makes sense from a business standpoint, Lindzon notes:
I know Jeff Bezos is cheap but Twitter will not get much cheaper and he already owns the Washington Post. I believe there will be a bidding war. Netflix should reach for Twitter as well. Google and maybe Microsoft will be forced into the bidding, but Amazon should win. If Bezos buys separately with private equity he can just take Twitter private and kick off Donald Trump. I hope he takes the media war up a notch because leaving news to Facebook and Google is a shitshow.
This ties in with a prediction of my own: Forget everything you know about Twitter. Twitter isn't a social network; it's a hypercloud platform. It's poised to be the next hypercloud star. (See Twitter's the Next Hypercloud Star (No Joke).)
Twitter is a platform optimized for delivering content in real time, with minimal latency. The Twitter platform is now being used to deliver text messages of 140 characters or less, as well as video, both real-time and otherwise. But those are just a couple of the applications possible on the Twitter hypercloud. The emerging category of Internet of Things applications demands just the characteristics Twitter provides: IoT apps need to be low latency; they often deliver very little data (like, say, 140 characters or less); and Twitter was born to run on feature phones, suggesting it can be easily adapted to the low power-consumption requirements of many Internet of Things devices.
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So why shouldn't the company that owns the leading hypercloud of today, Amazon Web Services Inc. , acquire an emerging hypercloud leader?
Especially if it gives Bezos an opportunity to stick it to Trump, who essentially called Bezos a tax cheat and said during the campaign that Amazon would have "problems... such problems" if Trump become president. In response, Bezos promised to save Trump a seat on the Blue Origin rocket Bezos is investing in -- but didn't say anything about bringing Trump back to Earth.
Twitter was the subject of widespread takeover rumors in the fall, with Google, Microsoft, Salesforce and Verizon named as possible suitors. The rumors didn't go anywhere. (See Twitter Soars on Takeover Rumors – Reports).
— Mitch Wagner, , Editor, Light Reading Enterprise Cloud
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