Shares of Twitter Inc (NYSE: TWTR) were trading higher by almost 20 percent Friday following a CNBC report the company is in discussions to sell itself to salesforce.com, inc.
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For Google, snagging Twitter would give it a much higher-profile social network than the struggling Google+ and would also give it access to a vast trove of Twitter search and advertising data.
Salesforce earlier this year unsuccessfully bid to acquire LinkedIn Corp., and Twitter could provide similar benefits. Google has been connected over the past year to a potential purchase of the social media company.
The migration from Twitter to other applications is due to the fact that Twitter began in 2006 at a time where the services and speed was not available everywhere.
“4 great place to promote others”.
Afshar’s sentiment is not shared on Wall Street, however.
Subscriber growth has flatlined at about 313 million users and usage has fallen in key markets like the U.S., with Twitter appearing to lose out to other social networking sites like Facebook and Snapchat. But with the iPhone in 2007 and camera phone and later applications, young users abandoned Twitter for something else.
The company’s flagging performance has also spurred talk of a takeover.
As of the end of the second quarter, the company had an accumulated loss of almost $2.3 billion since its inception. Before today, they had fallen 30 percent over the past year as rivals including Instagram and Snapchat gain traction with both advertisers and users and as investors question whether Twitter can survive as an independent company. The social network employs more than 2,000 workers and has more than 300 million users a month.
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Poor performance even prompted co-founder Jack Dorsey to return to the helm as chief executive back in 2015. Shares are down approximately 50% compared to their IPO price.
