Twitter Acquires ‘Values of n’, Adds Rael Dornfest To The Team

jamess · on Nov 25, 2008

Call me a bluff old traditionalist, but I really fail to understand new economy 2.0. Companies that have no revenue buying other companies that have no revenue and rejecting purchasing attempts from other companies who have no revenue who would pay for them in shares the value of which scarcely exceeds the value of the paper they are printed on.

Is there some ultimate strategy that the twitters, facebooks and youtubes of this world have that I'm too narrow minded to see but will make these companies bigger than Jesus, or is this the same business model as new economy v1?

bootload · on Nov 25, 2008

"... Call me a bluff old traditionalist, but I really fail to understand new economy 2.0. Companies that have no revenue buying other companies that have no revenue ..."

Because Twitter is not buying the company.

They are buying the technology and the lead developer, Rael Dornfest. So recruitment & a new interesting code base are the objective ~ http://www.valuesofn.com/blog/2008/11/fork-in-road.html

I've watched 'Values of N' before Rael started on Stikkit ~ ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/tags/2006nov08/ after getting a hint that Rael was quiting O'Reilly and I must say it's a very interesting bit of technology. If re-implemented partially at Twitter could "turbo charge" Twitter. I took the Stikkit for a test drive back in 2006 ~ http://www.flickr.com/photos/bootload/291957738/ and while Stikkit had a few hiccups at that time, the service matured well, but the number of users required to build a company was simply not there.

brk · on Nov 25, 2008

the same business model as new economy v1?

The same, but now with AJAX and Rails.

jonursenbach · on Nov 25, 2008

DHH is to blame for the economic collapse, not the housing markets.

hbien · on Nov 25, 2008

Heh, even though he stresses charging money for your product.

master · on Nov 25, 2008

The previous era's coke and hookers were far more exciting.

(If you think I am joking, please see: Pseudo.com)

aaronblohowiak · on Nov 25, 2008

No, far less IPOs.

brianr · on Nov 25, 2008

Companies that have no revenue buying other companies that have no revenue and rejecting purchasing attempts from other companies who have no revenue

You're probably right about the first two, but not the third. Facebook brought in ~$150m in '07 and is projecting something like $300m this year.

(source: http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/01/31/facebook-finances-leake...)

sh1mmer · on Nov 25, 2008

I've actually thought that Twitter could make quite the business model out of using their search acquisition and some other things to work with brands to track trends. The recent piece on O'Reilly blog post (http://broadcast.oreilly.com/2008/11/why-jerry-seinfeld-prob...) about tracking the emotional connection to the MS Seinfeld ad is exactly what I'm thinking.

Add to that some permission marketing stuff and they could be onto a goldmine...

redorb · on Nov 25, 2008

to be so good that another company buys your company for you, now that's good!

antiform · on Nov 25, 2008

He's been doing great stuff for a while. I've been a big fan since I first installed Blosxom as my first Perl script on my first webserver with CGI scripting what seems like ages ago. It seems like he would be a great fit with the whole Twitter culture. I'm excited to see what comes out of this.