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Twitter wants to be bought
According to Reuters, who has a source close to the issue, Twitter has been sniffing around the market looking for someone to buy them. Yes, this decade-old staple of the internet, one of the world’s largest social media platforms, is ready to come in out of the cold and warm itself by someone else’s hearth.
And who wouldn’t want to buy Twitter? After all, user growth is stagnant, advertising sales are lackluster, and it operates at a loss of hundreds of millions of dollars every year.
Come to think of it, quite a lot of people probably wouldn’t want to buy Twitter. But let’s look at the folks who do.
Right now, analysts believe that the most likely buyer will be Google, a company who has become accustomed to terrifying its shareholders by spending money on things like tying WiFi routers to balloons and continuing to develop Google Glass.
Salesforce.com (who?) is evidently a runner-up contender, and Verizon also appears to be eyeing the social media giant. (I think we’re all in agreement that, if it comes down to Google or Verizon, we hope Google ekes out the bid.) None of the involved companies responded to requests for comment.
Reuters observes that Twitter’s interest in selling directly after having failed Wall Street sales expectations during the first and second quarter of this year. The company has an 11-quarter trend of failing to produce a net profit.
The company has an 11-quarter trend of failing to produce a net profit.
It may be easy to understand Google or Verizon’s interest in the social media platform, but Salesforce seems to be a bit of an outlier. Salesforce is a cloud computing company that services business and has essentially no consumer-level interaction.
When questioned about their interest in Twitter, Salesforce execs said that they would be interested in using Twitter as a tool to power sentiment analysis so that they can show their business clients how brands are being regarded and talked about.
What do you think of Twitter looking for buyers? Who would make the best owner for the social platform? Let us know your thoughts in the comments!