If Apple Buys Twitter, Will It Set Up a Twitter Account?

(MoneyWatch)  This Apple-buying-Twitter rumor is so delicious that it deserves a little (virtual) ink, even if, I suspect, it really isn't the best Twitter could do -- and I'm not talking about the price.

Other suitors, such as Microsoft, or Google, or Facebook, might be willing to pony up more than the rumored $700 million that Apple is allegedly willing to pay for Twitter, but the reason Twitter could do better is because there's such an obvious culture clash between the reclusive Apple and the let-it-all-hang-out-there Twitter. From what I can tell, Apple doesn't even have a Twitter account, unless it's entrusted @iphone to an iPhone user with a penchant for bacon. (I also looked up twitter.com/apple -- the one tweet from that account is at right -- and twitter.com/mac and twitter.com/imac. There's no there there.)

Apple doesn't really do the social networking thing, even though it sells a device, the iPhone, which many people use as a platform upon which to tweet. The reason that's the case is because Apple decided to open up the iPhone's platform to third-party developers, so, through no doing of its own, the iPhone has become prominent on the social networking scene.

Stop a minute and ponder the weird paranoia of Apple, as best evidenced by the absurd level of secrecy surrounding Steve Jobs' health. Is this a company that can really flourish with a platform that is so antithetical to the most befuddling aspects of its corporate culture? Does this company even have a corporate blog? Well, no.

Also stop for a minute and ponder whether Apple has even the slightest bit of experience in what many people think will be Twitter's business model: leveraging real-time search via online ads. Apple creates some nifty online ads derived from its Mac vs. PC campaign, but its expertise in online advertising extends only as far as its ad buys.

Still, there is one reason to believe the rumors -- beyond the iPhone synergies -- and that's this embarrassingly gushy piece about Twitter written by someone at Apple, in which Apple appears to be looking for the ties that bind their two corporate culture together -- something about simplicity and being "green." Take a gander:

With just under 30 employees, the sense of social responsibility runs high at Twitter. Big pitchers of filtered lemon-cucumber water are in the office kitchen, so Twitter employees have clean drinking water without the plastic bottles. At the same time, Twitter stakeholders never forget that a billion people go without clean drinking water every day. The company's environmental concerns extend to its choices when it comes to technology.

Among the many reasons the Twitter organization is attracted to the MacBook and MacBook Air is their low power consumption, which reflects the company's green ethic.

Oh, puh-leeze. If Apple really does want to buy Twitter, compare the company to a rabid and rich baseball fan looking to buy a Major League franchise because he loves baseball -- not because he was ever any good at playing it.