2 posts and columns on Digital Garage

Voices

Twitter Japan Tweeting All the Way to the Bank

in News on September 1, 2010 at 10:31 am PT

Twitter’s Japanese arm may well be on its way to turning a profit next year the old-fashioned way: through ad sales. Digital Garage Inc., the Tokyo-based technology company that provides Twitter to millions of Japanese chirpers, said the revenue of its newly restructured social-media unit is expected to more than double to 1.7 billion yen through June 2011, according to its revised midterm business plan.

When Twitter Met Facebook: The Acquisition Deal That Fail-Whaled

in News on November 24, 2008 at 12:45 am PT

About three weeks ago, Facebook and Twitter ended several weeks of serious talks, in which Facebook was offering to acquire Twitter for $500 million of its stock, which also included a cash component. While rumors of Facebook’s interest were brought up in an interview with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg at the Web 2.0 Summit a few weeks ago, some shot down the idea as silly. Quite incorrectly, as it turns out, since top execs at both Facebook and Twitter were right then at the tail end of discussions, which were initiated by the privately held Facebook in mid-October, about bringing the two together. Those talks, sources on both sides said, are now over. So why did the deal break down?