Google to buy Twitter ?

A semi-flash news has dropped to my mailbox a minute ago.

According to a Techcrunch post Google is in talk with Twitter, and the price tag is said to be around 250 million dollars.
http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/04/02/sources-google-in-late-stage-talks-to-buy-twitter/

In my honest opinion it is a bit low if compared to Facebook deals.
As Google executives also stated Twitter holds the best real time search and Google does not hold a reliable tool in this field.

Google was becoming a bit "old school" compared to Twitter. Even Android was not enough of an innovation to be called "new business". Simply because it was a "follower".
But twitter possess an image that is attracting more and more people with the perception of "I am trendy".
Brands also has fame, and Google's fame is quickly diminishing. Nowadays a celebrity tweeting becomes a news just like people googling was a news 9-10 years ago.

Google entries:
http://mobil-pazarlama.blogspot.com/2009/03/google-to-pull-its-smpp-api.html
http://mobil-pazarlama.blogspot.com/2008/10/game-over-handango.html
Twitter entries: This is the first :)

iphone 3.0 announced

What are the main features coming with 3.0:

• Copy-Cut-Paste by double tapping the text.


• Copy-Paste pictures (if we can paste them to the e-mail it would be wonderful)


• Search feature in all apps, and special search function in the calendar, mail and ipod


• Using 3G ipod as modem for the laptops (data plans will be affected imo)


• Landscape keyboard in mail, SMS, Notes (imitating Storm I guess)


• MMS (MNO's will love this)


• Bluetooth (used for two apps:Exchanging files between devices and car audio stere connection)


• Shake and shuffle music (I cannot see the point??)


• New safari security tools


• Voice memo


• p2p - not with bluetooth with Wi-Fi hardwares


• browse friends' ipod


• Navigation apps


• PUSH NOTIFICATION


• VOIP

Will be free to all iphone users and for $9,95 to ipod touch users

Google to pull its SMPP API

Developers will not be able to put free SMS sending modules to their applications anymore. In fact it is not a surprise to anyone, google was planning to compensate the SMS with advertising. But even they could not find a way to attract the optimum traffic.

This step by google has affected Innerfence more than anyone else. Innerfence is a company (or should I call was) whose iphone application allowed buyers to send SMS messages around the world while Google paid the network operators for the traffic. I believe there will be trials between the buyers and innerfence, which is a shame for a nice application.

The only way to offer free SMS is start a program just like blyk. For every commercial watched, some free sms could be offered. In fact there are lots of examples for this but none has succeeded yet. The formula might be (Social Network + Commercials) = FreeSMS.

For one example of this visit the Facebook Sponsored SMS application, FaceSMS - http://apps.facebook.com/sponsorsms/ I have to warn you, if there is not a sponsor at the moment you click, you are not allowed to send text.

Turkcell Partners day 2009

Cenk Serdar , Ekrem Yener

Awards presentation

Vodafone lays off at least 260 in Turkey

No matter what their officials tell, it is certain that drop of sales led to that. Vodafone might be the worst managed telecom related company in Turkey. There was a wide margin between them and Avea in the number of subscribers in Telsim days, now they are almost becoming the smalles gsm operator in Turkey.

I believe there is no need to tell that they have no Value added services or innovative plans for this market. Some people in UK might be writing an exit plan at the moment.

Related posts:

http://mobil-pazarlama.blogspot.com/2008/05/iphone-vodafone-ile-geliyor-ama.html

Turkcell is planning to create a version of BLYK in Turkey

3G is coming to the Turkish market at last in May 2009, and one of Turkcell's first projects is to imitate Blyk and to provide free talking minutes to subscribers that will watch the ads.

In May 2008 in one of my posts I asked whether anyone will try this in Turkey or not. (link: http://mobil-pazarlama.blogspot.com/2008/05/bedava-sms-bedava-konuma-trkiyede-blyk.html)

Time has come. We'll see if the experiment will succeed or not. The ads will probably look something like this:

Turkcell Mobile Marketing services