Comments on: TweetPhoto: Did a "Hole-filler" Just Get Funded?

By: Value of Twitter Ecosystem Shrinks as Funding Falls «

Value of Twitter Ecosystem Shrinks as Funding Falls « — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 14:42:11 +0000

[...] and is focused on sharing photos from social networks including Twitter and Facebook. The company raised a Series B round earlier this year of $2.6 million from Canaan Partners and a group of angel investors. As Twitter [...]

By: TweetPhoto Renames Itself As It Grows Beyond Twitter

TweetPhoto Renames Itself As It Grows Beyond Twitter — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 13:58:21 +0000

[...] to integrate the service into other apps and services. The company, which was founded last year, closed a $2.6-million Series A round of funding in April from Canaan Partners, Anthem Partners and a series of angel [...]

By: schultzter

schultzter — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 15:07:56 +0000

If they were going to buy someone out I would suspect a service that's Twitter only and doesn't have funding that needs to be recovered. The owners probably won't sell at a loss (until they think Twitter is dead). Besides, TweetPhoto does some pretty under-handed things (like adding themselves to your following with flaky justification) and if they keep that up I don't see them becoming more popular than TwitPic or other similar services.

And flickr already posts to Twitter, I'm sure some of the other 'real' photo sharing services do too and in a matter of time they all will. The choice will be between a 'real' photo service like flickr or a one-of service integrated right-into Twitter. All these hole-filler's days are numbered!

By: Andrew

Andrew — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 05:34:47 +0000

One per niche/hole. If you can stake a claim to that hole before anyone else, and do so in such a way as to deter others, you're looking good.

I'm not sure that it's a lottery... unless Twitter selects acquisition targets randomly.

By: Mathew Ingram

Mathew Ingram — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 17:07:25 +0000

That's a fair point, Andrew -- but it's kind of a lottery, no? There can be only one :-)

By: tolleson

tolleson — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:44:14 +0000

Yes, stupidly

By: Andrew

Andrew — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 15:35:14 +0000

Hole-fillers may be worth funding, given that Twitter has demonstrated willingness to acquire in order to fill holes. This may be especially true right now, given that recent events may have scared off some other hole-fillers, and so Twitter's acquisition options may become more limited.

We can think of hole-filling as spec work. The hole in Twitter is an implicit request for ways to fill it. Hole-filling apps are the responses. One of the responses gets acquired.