Categories
Business

Twitter, buy Path

Here’s another of my strange acquisition desires; Twitter should buy Path.

It seems, for some strange reason, there’s a bit of Facebook envy at Twitter. Maybe media reports just make it seem that way, maybe it’s true, I don’t know. One thing is for sure, Twitter lacks certain functionality. I think Path could give them some of that functionality.

Path is a much better version of what Facebook would like to be on mobile. Path is beautifully designed, easy to use, and limited to following a small set of people. You can still share your Path adventures outside your immediate network, but your timeline is limited inside the application. It’s perfect. Not only is Path a better Facebook, it’s also a darned good replacement for Instagram. The photos feature is solid and it has all the nifty filters people have come to expect in applications (if you need more filters you can always get them via extensions.)

Another nifty addition would be Hipstamatic. I love this funky camera app but a lot of what it does could be redesigned as an awesome set of extensions (I could be very wrong about that.)

The bottom line is, Twitter could get a lot more functionality with the purchase of a single app.

Categories
Business Development

The Sparrow Acquisition Is A Good Thing

A wonderful boquet of flowers.Selligy Weblog: “This is not a good trend for Apple. Apple is depending on apps like Sparrow to make the iOS platform shine. Excellent apps like Sparrow cost a lot of money to build and maintain. Apple should be working hard to ensure independent app developers can earn even more than top salaries at Google, or they will all be poached away.”

Why should, or would, Apple care about keeping developers around? If someone walked up to me with a big pile of cash and wanted to acquire my popular, or unpopular app, and I felt it was a good thing, I’d do it in a heartbeat. So would a lot of people. This is the American Free Market at its best. A company puts together a group of talented people, creates a product people love, and gets the attention of a bigger company. That bigger company comes along and gobbles up the talent. Sure, as a user of Sparrow you may be a bit bummed, but it won’t last for long. As a little guy just getting started this is an opportunity. It means if I wanted to, I could pick up where Sparrow left off and create a great email client that looks and acts just like it. Filling that hole. Heck, maybe I’ll do something MUCH better. It will happen.

I have a feeling there is a company, or individual, out there today, slinging code in hopes to bring a new Sparrow-like client to life.

That’s pretty exciting.

Categories
Business

Facebook Acquires Acrylic

“I’m happy to announce today that we’ve packed up our small Vancouver studio and will be making the move to San Francisco in the coming weeks to join the design team at Facebook.” – Acrylic Blog

Wow. Who else will be acquired today?