Who Turns Down $500 Million in a Downturn? Twitter

It is William alone discreationary power probably he had a good reason for it............Private............No further say..........

He will be seen as Jerry Yang of Yahoo.

crazy

Evan Williams is hot!

They turned it down b/c it was Facebook stock (not cash).

What are Twitter's yearly earnings? Maybe $5,000? Maybe $1,000,000? Not to take 100,000 years worth of earnings, or even 500 years worth, is pretty dumb. Alpsly

Williams is a contrarian. Markets don't shrink. Available funds do. And there is a big market out there. Good luck, Williams.

to yahoo finance user: and...Mark Zuckerberg is hot - ? - and the Oracle dude Larry - everyone worth over $10M or $10B is hot - ? until they become burned out and fried like gary busy or brittney spears? This is the society we live in. Masses lacking in substance and original thinking; readily hypnotize-able with any thing commercialize-able; unwilling to save but willing to trample down another human being to get inside a Walmart (and for what exactly inside that walmart?). The trend - economic tipping point, political tipping point, next up spiritual tipping point?

What do you mean markets don't shrink? That's the dumbest thing I've heard in a very long time.

"Evan Williams is hot!" Yea - he's hot - like Star Jones. Meanwhile, Evan is an eediot aka Jerry Yang part II. Twitter will be twittering away soon due to stupid decisions by the current CEO. Long live web 2.0 - you were a good era in history (of supposedly) making money off of news feeds and chat messages.

I run a blog @ www.faslip.com and have recently signed up for this service. I can say I am not surprised that they got such an offer and I am not surprised they turned it down. I am sure it is safe to assume this is not the first offer they have recieved albeit maybe the largerst. However, after only subscribing to the service for a short amount a time its addictive. Its like a blackberry, you feel like you need to always respond and if you have people are following you, there is this tug to have to posts tweets with some decent frequency. So my guess is they feel they have a tangible long term product that is not just a fad and are probably going to hold out for that youtube money, 1.5 billion. Must be nice, tens of thousands of people do not have jobs and these guys can turn down 500 million. Im not mad at them, they come up with a simple but great viral concept, but... must be nice.

Twitter's a more refined social networking tool than anything else out there. It basically allows the creation of a microtribe and lets you add or drop members. We've moved towards something like this since the advent of texting- it brings us one crucial step closer to 24/7 groupthink, which sounds like it's really out there if you don't understand the fundamental ways society is changing right now. As the gear improves and the bandwidth keeps going up, it may be possible to create completely new modalities of interaction, especially with a generation that's been closely connected with others like them since birth. Think twins, but twenty or so of them influencing each others development, behaviors, and worldviews over fifty years or so. Twittering birds apprise each other of their relative location and condition- allowing a flock to move as a unit, and conferring additional security to all members. This effect was already profound after texting became commonly available- people would quite literally have panic attacks upon discovering they'd left their phones at home because it was the modern equivalent of solitary confinement. It's a stretch to understand why people find being able to flock such an attractive thing- but the idea of observing and capitalizing on the behavioral trend is genius. Not selling when many may soon be unable to afford mobile devices (get the men in white ready) is risky, but I think I'd keep Twitter too because of the completely unexplored long term potential.

I still cannot know what kind of real value this kind of website can get us in the long run. I still cannot know why still there are investors who is eager to waste his hard-earned money of whopping $800 million to this kind of website generating nothing but useless and cheap talks. Are all these internet website investors trying to bring up that crazy internet stock bubble again? Man, be sober now. I would rather invest that $800 million in the strong and long-surving US blue chip companies that are really generating resources, not useless and cheap talks, for our country.

the jerry yang of yahoo? you are the people that use yahoo, where would you be if microsoft would have purchased yahoo and transfered everything to msn! i think jerry yang made the right choice dont sell a company that is amazing on its own.

If someone makes such an offer of a basic app that has had an unbelievable viral component, take it! It is sort of like hotmail. they took it and now e-mail addresses are not worth much.

Reminds me more of Hotmail than Yahoo, like zoupie says. Lots of buzz, few revenues, big offer... time will tell, but if the offer were in cash, I'd take it and build something else.

The main reason why Twitter rejected is because it was going to be an all stock deal for a private company. How silly an offer is it? And these nuts in the bay area still think that a dumb social networking company is still worth billions in a rapidly dwindling ad revenue space and deflationary economy. One can always dream of course. If you are sane you would never accept an all-stock purchase no matter what stock it is. Cash is king!

God Sarah Lacy's hot. Great rack sweety!!!!!!!!!!!

"I still cannot know what kind of real value this kind of website can get us in the long run. I still cannot know why still there are investors who is eager to waste his hard-earned money of whopping $800 million to this kind of website generating nothing but useless and cheap talks. Are all these internet website investors trying to bring up that crazy internet stock bubble again? Man, be sober now. I would rather invest that $800 million in the strong and long-surving US blue chip companies that are really generating resources, not useless and cheap talks, for our country." Just for starters, you can learn to use this language by example. Also, the stuff you don't find interesting may be useless to you, but enlightening to someone else- and vice versa. Finally, talk averts wars, and it can start them- hardly useless- and if you price the cost of a good laptop and wireless broadband access, you get the idea that it's not really cheap, either. For that matter, the time I and a lot of other folks put into writing what amount to short essays on a plethora of topics might be unaffordable if we charged you what others pay us for our thoughts in a professional capacity. Try not to beat other posters up because you feel the need to do something, anything at all, to make things better. You may see people "wasting time" here. but a lot of us are actually working in the wider world to make it better. This is just a place to share ideas, and if you don't like it, fine- but try to put some solid thoughts out there even when it’s just to critique someone else.. You never know what you might start.....

Cash is king. Stock options are worthless-and once Obama is officially Prez.- there will no longer be a "free capital market" Capitalism is dead !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Long live Socialism- All these aquisitions are just a way of simifying our financial institutions for Government takeover!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Long live King B.H. OBAMA-Bye-bye America?