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Salesforce, Google, Microsoft, Verizon Are In Talks With Twitter For a Potential Acquisition (cnbc.com)

Posted by msmash on from the who-should-buy-twitter dept.

Twitter is in conversation with a number of tech companies for a potential sale. The social company is in talks with Google and cloud computing company Salesforce (which also wanted to purchase LinkedIn), and may receive a formal offer soon, reports CNBC. TechCrunch corroborating on the report adds that Microsoft and Verizon are also in talks, albeit separately, with Twitter for the same. From CNBC report: Shares of Twitter were up 20 percent Friday. Twitter's board of directors is said to be largely desirous of a deal, according to people close to the situation, but no sale is imminent. There's no assurance a deal will materialize, but one source close to the conversations said that they are picking up momentum and could result in a deal before year-end. Suitors are said to be interested as much in the data that Twitter generates as its place as a media company.

2 of 65 comments (clear)

  1. Re:They can't figure out how to actually make mone by rudy_wayne · · Score: 4, Interesting

    ...so the next best option is to sell

    This has been the business model since the first internet bubble.

    Start a bullshit business
    Get bought by someone
    PROFIT!

    Worked well for Mark Cuban.

  2. Makes sense, sell at the top of the bubble by ErichTheRed · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Remember back to 2000 when AOL and Time Warner merged. That obviously didn't go well, but it did kind of mark the top of the dotcom bubble. Yahoo and Twitter are smart to get bought out while the bubble is still going...Yahoo's pretty irrelevant now, and Twitter can't make enough money off its users. People will only pay so much for Big Data about 140-character tweets. It makes sense as a useful little service, but not really a business. I think everyone is finally realizing that it's not going to cause a communications revolution and trying to get their money out.

    I'll bet Microsoft will buy it and add it to its LinkedIn acquisition. I could definitely see them trying to shoehorn both things into their business offerings -- Twitter as a customer service channel, LinkedIn as an automated recruiting department. I'm an old fart, but I don't even see younger people I know tweeting. I see businesses hiring 23-year-old marketing majors as social media managers and letting them say random things on the company's Twitter account, answer customer questions, etc. But does having that channel open actually produce anything valuable?