This is a fair point, and one I hadn't considered. Bravo!
But, getting Twitter doesn't mean Twitter pre-any-users-at-all was worth investing $41m at a possible $80m valuation. It might still not be, as it has no business plan to speak of.
I guess I'm naive, but I usually apply the "can (Facebook|Google|Big Company of the Decade) copy this quickly?" as a measure for the value of a service, but then again, it doesn't seem to apply for Place checkins (neither Facebook nor Google seem to have made too much traction against FourSquare) nor GroupOn. I guess that's why I'm not an investor :)
But, getting Twitter doesn't mean Twitter pre-any-users-at-all was worth investing $41m at a possible $80m valuation. It might still not be, as it has no business plan to speak of.
I guess I'm naive, but I usually apply the "can (Facebook|Google|Big Company of the Decade) copy this quickly?" as a measure for the value of a service, but then again, it doesn't seem to apply for Place checkins (neither Facebook nor Google seem to have made too much traction against FourSquare) nor GroupOn. I guess that's why I'm not an investor :)