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Twitter shares jump more than 20% on report of takeover talks

Twitter has begun talks with several tech firms, including Google and Salesforce, to explore selling itself, CNBC reported this morning.

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Salesforce executives said they license the Twitter “firehose” of all Tweets that come through the platform, and use it to power sentiment analysis and other tools that show how companies and brands are being discussed and perceived.

The company’s board is incredibly interested in finding a buyer, sources said, CNBC notes. However, the rumors have certainly helped to drive up the price of Twitter’s stock today by over 19%, as of this writing.

Twitter’s market cap is now $15.5 billion, but it has been bolstered over the last few weeks by the speculation of a potential sale.

A spokeswoman for Salesforce declined to comment. Representatives from Twitter and Google were not immediately available for comment. The company is valued by the market at $16 billion, but it is likely that any suitor would have to pay substantially more to gain control of such a high profile internet service.

CNBC reiterated on Friday that Google was interested in Twitter.

In the years since its November 2013 initial public offering, Twitter has struggled with slow user expansion and shrinking revenue growth.

None of the companies involved has released any official statements regarding the matter; however, Vala Afshar, Chief Digital Evangelist for Salesforce, did tweet about it.

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There is a perception that the company is more of a niche social media site that will never attract as big of an audience as Facebook and its Instagram subsidiary. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey is not in favor of an acquisition. Meanwhile, the company grew its users by just 3 percent to 313 million.

For sale one second-hand slightly soiled social network