Micro-blogging site Twitter is reportedly in conversation with a number of technology companies including Google and Salesforce for a potential sale, reported CNBC.
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Along with the newspaper, sources revealed to several news outlets, including CNBC and TechCrunch, that Google, Microsoft and Verizon are also discussing a potential acquisition of Twitter. Twitter’s declining stock value has led to speculation that the company could be sold in the near future. But with 313 million monthly users, Twitter “might be limping, but it’s not lame”, according to Recode, which estimates the company could go for anywhere between $18 billion and $30 billion.
Salesforce, which earlier tried to acquire LinkedIn (which Microsoft eventually bought), is vying for a social networking platform in its kitty for long.
Vala Afshar, whose LinkedIn profile says he is the chief digital evangelist at Salesforce, put out a tweet after the CNBC report that hinted at the company’s interest.
Whether he would do this during discussions about buying the company seems unlikely, and he later issued a further messaging explaining why he had posted the original message. Salesforce declined to comment. “1 personal learning network 2 the best realtime, context rich news 3 democratize intelligence 4 great place to promote others”. As a result, Twitter’s stocks have soared as high as 23 percent based on the news. The company employs almost 4,000 staff, and turned over $2.21 billion in revenue previous year, with a profit of $521 million. One source said buyout talks were “picking up momentum” and a deal could be announced before the end of the year.
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Twitter has struggled during its three years as a publicly traded company.
