It's been awhile, so here's another edition of Quick Hits.

  • If Twitter doesn't have a few bidders at this snapshot in time, I'd be shocked.  Just about all the major tech companies would benefit from owning Twitter.
  • Once everyone knows Twitter's next step, a series of competitive products will emerge from those who don't acquire them.  Then the aggregators will emerge like they did in instant messaging (Trillian, Meebo), search (Metacrawler, Dogpile) and social media (Flock, FriendFeed).
  • Nobody is talking about Amazon outside of cloud computing.  I expect them to break out from cloud computing to do a much broader range of things for companies over the next few years.
  • The Apple/Twitter thing may just indeed be rumor, but remember that Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, etc. are all looking to keep growing at impressive rates to keep investors happy.  As time passes, they'll get closer and closer to each other.  There will be winners and there will be losers.  Winnners will be more aggressive in new areas (e.g. Amazon) while losers will sit around and rely on the past for future success.  This is what also will drive the next wave of M&A for startups, as well as the next wave of… gasp… IPOs.
  • If I'm a forward thinking major tech player, I have to look at local online advertising as the next big growth opportunity.  An 18%+ CAGR over the next 4 years with potential well beyond that looks pretty good in an environment when everything else is deflating.
  • Along those lines, Marchex, with a $125m market cap depressed in part because of ongoing reinvestment in 300k+ domain names, would be a pretty good deal for a variety of tech companies looking to make a dent in local advertising.  I am not sure what they are doing with social media though.