How a Tweetdeck, UberMedia deal could cut down Twitter’s bird | Hacker News Reader

How a Tweetdeck, UberMedia deal could cut down Twitter’s bird

eu.techcrunch.com

This article is a huge, speculative waste of time. It's based on the assumption that UberMedia could convince Tweetdeck's "power tweeters" to switch from Twitter to some other platform if Twitter doesn't relent and accept advertising terms more to UberMedia's liking.

Is there a tension between Twitter and the companies that are trying to create (and capture) value on Twitter's platform? Of course. But this article reads like little more than over-the-top stream-of-consciousness link-baiting.

In other words, it sounds like TechCrunch circa 2011.

As a result, Uber has the power to say to Twitter “We have 20-30 percent of Tweets. So, are you feeling lucky? Are ya?”
Uber can then say “Unless you let us sell our own advertising, not yours, against those Tweets, we will have to migrate our user base onto a different platform.”
Boom

This is the .44 magnum Bill Gross is holding to Twitter’s head.

But why would those power users that use TweetDeck continue to do so if the owner of the app attempted to migrate them to a different service? Why would they be ok with being disconnected from the Twitter service they use so much of?

Totally agree. Also, he makes it sound that somehow creating a different platform - comparable to twitter in scale - is an easy task....

Not that I agree with article, but you have to figure that if this were to happen, at least 50% of Uber users would leave the platform, so they'd really only need a service that can support 10% or less of Twitter's current load.

I don't think they'd have the power to drag the users to a new service without them wanting to join - but they could highlight a new one quite prominently within TweetDeck.

A new service that has 20-30 percent of tweets from the start and many power users is off to a pretty good start as a twitter competitor.

In a way, for those reasons, it's a shame twitter have gobbled it up - but obvious why they'd want it.

The advertising power comes from the Twitter userbase. Who will Uber be advertising to if they migrate the power users (mostly non-consumers) off Twitter?

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