Headline: Twitter Wouldn’t Sell For $1 Billion, Says Source  TechCrunch reports on potential acquisition by Google.

As you will learn, I am a big fan of social networking and interoperability.  Although I personally am only lukewarm to the concept of staying in constant communication with the world around us, I firmly believe that we must meet people where they are if we are to have meaningful communication in the 21st century.  This will be especially true in the changing world of education, where online classrooms will have to compete with other portals, such as Facebook and google for the attention of students.  To help bridge this challenge, I think that people need to be able to easily use technologies that are familiar and can serve multiple purposes.  This is why I am in favor of a Twitter-Google marriage. 

For those unfamiliar, Twitter is a short form communication tool set around keeping posts to 144 characters or less (text message size), so that people can send quick notes an updates on multiple platforms, ranging from cell phones to web pages and beyond.  Although Twitter has made great inroads to ensure that their messages can be broadcast everywhere, including Facebook, they are still a small private company that if it were to go under, would take all of their messages and their broad user base along with it.  Enter Google, with its large reach and technical firepower, they have the ability to help ensure that the technology lasts and seamlessly integrates with multiple technologies (whether they like it or not).  In many ways, acquiring a company like twitter helps lay a familiar infrastructure to provide a new communication network to the masses.  This pipeline will be able to provide all types of content, user generated, educational or otherwise, in a format that speaks to the users.  Again, to be clear, in this day and age we need to speak to people using the mediums that speak to them…

Looking back on this news story, although these acquisition talks can be construed as Google trying to buy up another up and coming potential competitor, I still think that absorbing exciting new companies like Twitter help diversify and in the long run strengthen Google from a creativity standpoint.  Fresh eyes and ideas are only a good thing, especially in the world of social networking where we are all still unsure where the road will lead us next.

To recap, the article discusses that Twitter’s asking price may be too high, but I am sure the discussions will continue.  These type of stories are not only meaningful to those in Silicon Valley but could have far reaching social implications.

Image via CrunchBase

This new app from Google sounds like it has the potential to be the conduit that will make all the content from places like facebook, twitter et. al. actually seem manageable and accessible!  Imagine access to all of this, plus functionality that can be found in collaborative tools like Google docs. 

Again, who knows what this will really be?  However am quite happy someone is trying to pull it all together.

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=Default&articleId=9133669&taxonomyId=0&pageNumber=1

If you haven’t started using Google Chrome already, you should make the leap!

A nice visual history of communication, despite mostly being an ad for Google Voice (which I love btw).

(via infoneer-pulse, dataviz)