Hasta La Gadget!

Toyota has unconsciously played the race card in naming their new compact two-door minivan, a sporty variant of the Porte MPV called the “Spade”. If you think that’s a tad over the line, join the club.

Apple has been on a social networking kick lately, what with Twitter’s footings in iOS 5 and OS X Mountain Lion as well as Facebook’s upcoming presence in iOS 6. From what the New York Times hears, that fascination could become more of a fixation. The company has reportedly chatted with Twitter in past months about the possibility of investing money on the scale you’d normally expect from a later-stage venture capitalist: the newspaper is talking “hundreds of millions” of dollars based on Twitter being valued at more than $10 billion. Any such deal would be less about funding (Twitter purportedly has $600 million-plus in the bank) and more about getting cozy in a social world where Apple still has some learning to do. Apple might equally want to dissuade competitors from getting any ideas, we’d add. Neither side will comment, and the negotiations aren’t even supposed to be active at present. Regardless, that Apple might have even toyed with a social networking investment could represent a major change in tack for a company that’s not always known for playing well with others.

Filed under: Internet

NYT claims Apple has dallied with investing ‘hundreds of millions’ in Twitter originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Jul 2012 23:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  New York Times  | Email this | Comments

Apple is reportedly planning to make a huge splash in the social networking arena, but it doesn’t want to build something from the ground up. It would be impossible to compete with the likes of Facebook and Twitter, so apparently the company is willing to dole out a bucket of money to Twitter and become a strategic partner with the microblogging site.

It’s something that doesn’t really make front page news every day, but when you think about it, Apple doesn’t really have a great presence in social media. That is to say, it doesn’t have much business in that market; obviously its existence on Facebook and Twitter is big enough, but it doesn’t play a very active role in the social space. If these reports are true, obviously Apple wants to change that.

According to a New York Times report, we’re not talking about a piddly investment. Apple has considered pouring in money to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. The potential deal would place a value on Twitter of more than $10 billion. We all know Apple has a growing desire to play in all the hot markets in the world of consumer tech, so this is a logical step. Obviously, though, none of this discussion has been made public.

[via NY Times]

Apple apparently seeking strategic Twitter investment is written by Mark Raby & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Gender roles! Fun to talk about, even more fun to reverse, and extra super duper fun to argue about until you pass out from exhaustion. So let’s do all three! More »

ASK Inc. Japan will launch another graphics card from Leadtek namely the GeForce GT 630. The card is equipped with 96 CUDA Cores, a 128-bit memory interface, a core clock of 810MHz, a shader clock of 1620MHz and a 4GB of DDR3 memory set @ 1600MHz, and features 1x DVI-I, 1x D-Sub and 1x HDMI outputs. The Leadtek GeForce GT 630 will go on sale from July 28th for 7,280 Yen (about $93). [Product Page]