Twitter For Sale? Stock Shoots Up After Buyout Rumors

Twitter is up for sale, at least, that is what investors seem to think.

The stock shot up after rumors of an apparent buyoff loomed, Barron’s reported. Twitter has brought in Goldman Sachs to fight off the two suitors, which may include Google, Facebook and Yahoo—all interested in owning the microblogging giant.

Twitter has been growing slowly and faces more criticism every month as its 300 million user-base starts to look for new ways to utilize the site. It has resulted in the CEO Dick Costolo confirming it has a major harassment problem, which it will try and fix.

Even though the site makes a good amount of revenue, profitability has never been a key focus of Twitter. It is resulted in less than spectacular results compared to other key social players like Facebook, Snapchat and Pinterest.

Facebook has already acquired two major social services: WhatsApp and Instagram. Albeit Twitter is worth a lot more than both with a market capitalisation of just over $32 billion, but that is not out of Facebook’s budget.

It is certainly not out of Google’s budget either, with $60 billion in the bank. Twitter could be extremely useful for Google, acting as a way to remove Google Plus and Blogger, consolidating it into one platform that offers full blogging ability.

Google has shown it can work with third-party sites and not completely train wreck them. YouTube is the most obvious case, acquiring the video company and making it the giant that pays out millions to content creators.

Yahoo is another potential buyer, although this is highly unlikely given investors are already annoyed at CEO Marissa Mayer’s massive budget for acquisitions. Microsoft also could have eyes on the microblogging service, considering it has no social connection currently.

It might seem like a long shot, but Apple would work as well. Apple lacks key services – having Twitter could add a blogging and social site for users. Apple’s biggest acquisition is Beats Electronics for $3 billion, but that doesn’t mean CEO Tim Cook is not willing to splash the $185 billion Apple has accumulated.

Twitter clearly does not want to sell to anyone, shown by the Goldman Sachs hire.

Source: [Barron’s]