Facebook turns ornithologist...finds whale

News is that Facebook is interested in a little birdie….Twitter. There a lot of news doing the rounds out there and the apparent valuation on Twitter is US$500 million, but Biz Stone has refused to comment on the issue so far which would add more fuel to the acquisition fire. The most reputable source so far is the Financial Times in the UK, who have apparently got confirmation from two separate sources.

There’s been chatter about this proposed tie-up for a while now, so the Twitterati won’t be surprised by this talk. What is surprising are the values being placed on companies such as Facebook and Twitter, with the former having a rather lofty valuation slapped on it when Microsoft acquired a part of them earlier in the year. What will happen to our little birdie pal should Facebook snap it up, more importantly – what will happen to the Fail Whale? Well, rest assured my fellow Tweeters, the one thing that Biz Stone did say is that they want to remain an independent messaging service.

MyTake – this is probably going to happen, there are obvious synergies between the two companies and Twitter is approaching the tipping point, so Facebook will want to catch it just before. Living in Australia, Twitter has yet to get the same kind of following it enjoys in the rest of the world, mostly due to the way the telcos charge us for our mobile plans, but it’s still popular and I could see a move like this thrusting it into the limelight.

The Twitter song

Ahh, Twitter, we love you. You have already spawned the Fail Whale and now you have your own song.  Written by a UK musician called Ben Walker, the song proudly proclaims that "you're nobody if you're not on Twitter, and if you aren't there already, you've missed it".

I have to say, it's very catchy and has a healthy dose of good old fashioned British humour. It reminds me of the London Underground song that came out a few years ago, only without the swearing and stuff.....

MyTake - Don't worry, you've not really missed it, go and join Twitter today and you can even follow Ben or yours truly.  This is yet another example of social media inspiring popular culture (you may have read my post on Facebook: The movie) and I think we are just going to see more and more examples of this. So, next time someone tells you that social media is a waste of time, sing them the Twitter song.