"Talent Acquisition" - aka Employment Audition

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Owen Thomas at VentureBeat has an interesting take on Twitter's acquisition of Fluther, which has been referred to as a "talent acquisition." We've seen a few of these recently, as Owen points out. Kudos to him for calling out Twitter on this: In no uncertain terms, this is simply Twitter hiring smart people. Nothing wrong with that at all. His point is, companies acquire assets or they hire people; no such thing as a "talent acquisition" in M&A practice.

I wouldn't proclaim Fluther a failed start-up. I had never heard of Fluther before yesterday. And I'm sure most people had not. And I don't expect to see it's use explode. It will, supposedly, live on as a standalone service. Is it a failure? I guess that depends on how you view it.

As an "employment audition" it is highly successful, having captured the attention of Twitter and secured these guys great jobs. That's a big success in my mind.

Related articles that I hand-selected with Zemanta's help:

• Fluther Flocks to Twitter (twitter.com)
• Twitter Acquires Talent Behind Slick Q&A Site (mashable.com)
• How Twitter acquires people (venturebeat.com)