Why does Apple need Twitter?

Almost all Apple critics agreed that the company should buy Twitter, but Apple’s former engineer, Patrick Gibson, believes that the real value of this purchase will be that Twitter can help Apple develop really useful and good working internet services.


Former Apple engineer was the last to agree that the giant consumer electronics company he had been working for a long time really needs to gobble up Twitter. However, Patrick Gibson, the man who was still working on the creation of the first-generation iPad, did not mean that Apple should buy Twitter just to make its applications and services more focused on social networks. Gibson thinks Apple needs to gobble up Twitter, because at the moment, the apple giant lacks an understanding of how to actually create web applications that really work. So can Twitter fill in the missing links in the Apple DNA chain to succeed in the Internet application market?

It’s easy to argue against Apple, because even the most ardent fans of the company recognize some of its shortcomings, if you ask them in private or after a couple of drunk glasses :). According to Gibson, Apple has a nightmare usability product known to all of us as iTunes. Even long-standing iTunes users have noted such a habit as, for example, the sudden removal of music or other content without any warnings. In addition, Apple also has some social projects, such as Ping and Game Center, which currently claim to be virtual ghost towns (Ping was eliminated not so long ago). Well, of course, we can’t but mention their ancestor - the “dinosaur”, formerly known as .Mac and MobileMe, now renamed iCloud.

Gibson also emphasizes that the company's ability to offer consumers high-quality “cloud” services (which, in fact, are ordinary web services with a new fictitious name) is becoming extremely important for organizations such as Apple and Google in an attempt to make relationships with end users more durable. And while Google is still behind Apple in the design and usability of the devices themselves, it significantly outperforms the apple company in everything related to web services. Just compare mail on iCloud and in Gmail or iTunes and Google Play, and Apple will seem to you an obvious outsider. Gibson adds, quoting his friend:

“It seems Google is improving its device-building skills faster than Apple is doing this with its web services. I have been a Mac follower and an ardent fan of Apple for many years, but even I admit that Apple’s approach to creating web products is a complete failure. Almost everything that Apple does and that is somehow connected with the Internet makes me deeply disappointed. ”

Apple does not fully understand what social networks are.

Caption in the picture:

• 3x increase in the number of iOS users among people registered on Twitter
• 10 billion tweets made through iOS 5
• 47% of all photos posted on Twitter were uploaded using iOS 5

In an attempt to improve the social component of their products, realizing how terrible Ping was, Apple announced a collaboration with Twitter, which developed a social service that was embedded directly in the software of all Apple products (and more recently announced something similar with Facebook). In principle, such cooperation can already be called partnerships, and the takeover may seem inappropriate for Apple, as financial columnist Barry Ritholtz, as well as several others, previously believed.

However, the main idea of ​​Patrick Gibson is not that buying Twitter should make Apple more social-oriented. In his opinion, the main reason why it is necessary to do this is because Twitter understands how to develop, maintain and develop such large-scale web services that process hundreds of thousands of interactions every minute. From Gibson's point of view, hardly Apple is able to cope with such a task alone. Here is how he describes this situation:

“Twitter doesn’t just use the most advanced web technology, he invented it ... Apple should not buy Twitter because of its social network, but because of the accumulated experience, knowledge and technologies that can undoubtedly help bring Apple and iCloud to 21 century. And the social network in this case appears rather as an additional bonus. ”

Having advanced his theory, Gibson goes on to list the reasons why the deal is most likely not to be completed, among which is the fact that Twitter would prefer to remain independent and try to justify its market value of $ 10 billion. Apple, in turn, denying all the failures of its outdated approach to web technologies, may consider it inappropriate to throw out such a large amount of money for this purchase. In addition, “transforming more and more into a media company, Twitter is likely to lose part of its development staff, and with it a part of its potential, which will undoubtedly make Twitter a less attractive purchase,” Gibson said (incidentally, - which of what Gibson is talking about is actually happening).

However, this is an interesting idea. There is no doubt that Apple’s web services are the weakest side, and so far there is no reason to believe that the company has seriously taken up the solution to this problem. Although some Apple fans still hope that the design guru, Jony Ive will be able to help by taking responsibility for the usability of all Apple products, and not just the hardware of the devices. Merging corporate cultures is never easy, but Twitter would probably fit most easily into Apple’s structure if, of course, the company still wants to reach unprecedented heights and apply for the purchase of Google itself.

PS On gigaom this articlecaused a storm of discussions, such as: how iTunes could be worse than Google Play, iCloud a good cloud, etc.
Interesting opinion of a habr what do you think?