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Twitter’s suitors & Facebook data: A WSJ.com roundup

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Twitter’s Suitors Talk in Billions – WSJ.com.

Although I’ve been tweeting since 2007 — and on my current feed since 2009, when Twitter really started to catch fire — I still find it hard to believe that Twitter is worth $8 billion to $10 billion. Yes, I get most of my news from tweeted links, but the medium itself often strikes me as a roomful of AD(H)D kids all talking at the same time. (I can write this with absolute authority.) So when business folks start talking about Twitter in terms of BILLIONS of dollars, I lend a skeptical ear. However, the WSJ story has a quote from Ethan Kurzweil of Bessemer Venture that clarifies for me Twitter’s importance to advertising and marketing. From the story:

“Are these prices justifiable based on financial multiples? No.” But these start-ups are building social services and have lots of data about their users and “the market is valuing that mightily right now.”

As “The Conversation” — as it was called in a class I had on social media — spins on fast and furious, Twitter and Facebook make it easy to forget the almighty user data they’re collecting — and maybe selling. Also on WSJ.com today is a story about a data broker who has been paying application developers for Facebook users’ information. WSJ reports Facebook made the announcement Friday and has suspended some of the developers for six months. The data broker buying the user information was not identified by Facebook.

Author: Jacqui Barrineau

Jacqui Barrineau is a writer and editor who lives in the suburbs of Washington, D.C., with husband Trey, a Shetland Sheepdog and two unhelpful-but-funny cats. Her work has appeared in "So to Speak" and "Calliope," and she's a regular contributor to the flash-fiction sites Paragraph Planet and Doorknobs & Bodypaint. Once upon a time, she was the audience engagement editor at USA Today. Now she does other fun things that involve advertising, marketing and social media. The views expressed here and in other outlets are hers, not her clients'. Outside of work, she's proud to serve on the Northern Virginia Community College Marketing Advisory Committee. As a committee member, she joins industry leaders in lending their knowledge and expertise to ensure the college's Marketing curriculum is relevant and responsive to the needs of the students and the surrounding business communities.

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