Salesforce, Google, Microsoft, Verizon Are In Talks With Twitter For a Potential Acquisition (cnbc.com) 65
Twitter is in conversation with a number of tech companies for a potential sale. The social company is in talks with Google and cloud computing company Salesforce (which also wanted to purchase LinkedIn), and may receive a formal offer soon, reports CNBC. TechCrunch corroborating on the report adds that Microsoft and Verizon are also in talks, albeit separately, with Twitter for the same. From CNBC report: Shares of Twitter were up 20 percent Friday. Twitter's board of directors is said to be largely desirous of a deal, according to people close to the situation, but no sale is imminent. There's no assurance a deal will materialize, but one source close to the conversations said that they are picking up momentum and could result in a deal before year-end. Suitors are said to be interested as much in the data that Twitter generates as its place as a media company.
Well... (Score:3, Insightful)
so, they all want to be twits... (Score:2)
save your money, guys, signup is free.
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I think this would be a pretty HUGE consolidation.
Just re-read the Slashdot headline:
> Salesforce, Google, Microsoft, Verizon Are In Talks With Twitter For a Potential Acquisition
Wow. I didn't know that:
1. Twitter could afford to buy Salesforce, Google, Microsoft and Verizon.
2. That Google is a relic of the internet
Twitter Board (Score:1)
Re:Twitter Board (Score:5, Funny)
They only have 140 characters to fill, so I guess they manage.
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And the board secretary who takes the minutes of the meeting has the easiest job in the world (Well, second easiest, right after Donald Trump's fact checker.)
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What do they talk about at a board meeting for any company? Look at the board of directors for just about any company and they are all executives at other companies, i.e., they already have a full time job, probably in another part of the country, so there's no way for them to be familiar with the day-to-day operations of another business. So, the CEO comes in, feeds them a bunch of bullshit, everyone agrees, meeting adjourned.
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I've been to a few of those meetings. A lot of boring and meaningless financial projection and updates on current projects and acquisitions. Then when something goes right they all pat each other on the back and give a token mention of the people that did the real work.
Brave New World (Score:2)
Get ready for a whole new round of internet censorship, brought to you by the Corporations, for the Corporations.
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Thank you for not writing "towing the line", it would have driven me crazy. That is all.
They can't figure out how to actually make money (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:They can't figure out how to actually make mone (Score:5, Interesting)
...so the next best option is to sell
This has been the business model since the first internet bubble.
Start a bullshit business
Get bought by someone
PROFIT!
Worked well for Mark Cuban.
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It's not about Twitter failing to be profitable, it's about all these suitors wanting the last available huge set of user data on the Internet.
Internet products and services above a certain critical mass threshold become a means to an end: user data. The product or service is just the bait.
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Hey Google! Hear that? I think I've found your new company motto. Right here.
Would appear to make sense (Score:2)
They have been having trouble monetizing. It does seem as though Twitter would fit well into a portfolio or suite of products rather than as a stand alone product.
I am thinking Google or Microsoft would have the most to gain by the acquisition but neither would likely be the best stewards.
However, they probably would be better than Verizon or Salesforce...
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Better it be Microsoft, then we won't have Twitter around for much longer.
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We can hope or we might be getting Clippy popping up while gaming on you XBox saying "looks like you head shot '420-4everF4gg07N00B69Y0lO' do you want help posting a video of tea bagging them to twitter?" everytime you play a game.
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Just imagine the glories of "Twitter for Skype" and "Twitter for Skype for Business"! The synergies will be paradigm shifting!
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Twitter has a tainted brand already. When they decided to implement the 1984ish named "safety and trust council" which is made up of all left-wing groups, some of which hold extremist views(other groups which engage in harassment of wrong-think targets) and then started banning or suspending people for wrong think, they started driving people to competing services.
One white elephant for sale. (Score:5, Insightful)
Whoever buys them is taking in a white elephant [wikipedia.org]. It will continue to bleed money, and won't be re-sellable for anywhere near what they pay for it. Changes to the service intending to make it less of a money pit could well drive away the few serious users it has.
This isn't like Microsoft acquiring Mojang, where they knew they would make money. They may still not get back what they paid, but at least the division is profitable, and they have done a good job of staying out of the way and letting it do its own thing (plus whatever spinoffs they request). With Twitter, the buyer most likely will lose money on both ends of the deal.
Yahoo is another white elephant. It probably won't be as loss-heavy, but it also offers less potential for turnaround.
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I would imagine that when the bigger fish swallows Twitter, they will just be retaining IP and codebase and whatever talent is strictly necessary. I doubt they would give a home to all the current Twitter employees.
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Google would likely to keep the employees, and in a few months announce that GTwitter will join the 60 or so services in the Google graveyard.
Microsoft would likely keep the employees at firs, destroy the product through mismanagement, then close any remote offices and fire anyone there.
Verizon would likely fire everyone immediately, and then bill them each $9000 for data overages.
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Meh. Twitter developers have made numerous significant contributions to open source - AND their stuff actually gets used. Unlike the schlock-tech that Facebook (for instance) has created.
Microsoft or Alphabet could easily do a talent-acquire, get rid of the useless twitter boards, fix filtering and a few outstanding issues with Twitter itself, and repurpose most of the acquired engineers to a more worthwhile task than "twitter infrastructure".
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Twitter-the-service is an amazing resource for advertising information. People don't just "like" (I mean star- no wait I mean heart) things on Twitter: a huge part of it is active engagement with topics that can be mined from all sorts of angles. It's a less-passive Facebook, and it's a better and more current indicator of what's trending than anywhere else on the web.
Twitter-the-company is in rough shape, and while I wouldn't say it's an easy job it seems pretty clear that it's largely been a management
"...said to be interested as much in the data" (Score:5, Funny)
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What the fuck is Verizon going to do with Yahoo! and now Twitter?
Replace their sms service with manadatory public twitter feeds. put non removable yahoo apps on all their devices that will suck up data to give you a stream of clickbat-y headlines for yahoo news, BestOfTumblerFeed, and other crap you don't want.
So much for Twitter (Score:5, Insightful)
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Of course, I fear that whoever buys it they'll make bad changes.
It looks like the future of the internet will be controlled by Google, Microsoft and Facebook, everything being eventually acquired by them
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Makes sense, sell at the top of the bubble (Score:5, Interesting)
Remember back to 2000 when AOL and Time Warner merged. That obviously didn't go well, but it did kind of mark the top of the dotcom bubble. Yahoo and Twitter are smart to get bought out while the bubble is still going...Yahoo's pretty irrelevant now, and Twitter can't make enough money off its users. People will only pay so much for Big Data about 140-character tweets. It makes sense as a useful little service, but not really a business. I think everyone is finally realizing that it's not going to cause a communications revolution and trying to get their money out.
I'll bet Microsoft will buy it and add it to its LinkedIn acquisition. I could definitely see them trying to shoehorn both things into their business offerings -- Twitter as a customer service channel, LinkedIn as an automated recruiting department. I'm an old fart, but I don't even see younger people I know tweeting. I see businesses hiring 23-year-old marketing majors as social media managers and letting them say random things on the company's Twitter account, answer customer questions, etc. But does having that channel open actually produce anything valuable?
Penny Stock pumpers (Score:2)
love Twitter.
media company (Score:2)
It's always really nice to begin your day with a good laugh and, well, this just made my day
Since hiring Anita Sarkeesian... (Score:2, Informative)
...for their Orwellian "safety committee," they've lost billions of dollars in shareholder value.
They even suspended Instapundit yesterday [pjmedia.com] for expressing non-approved thought, and they already banned @Nero and @RSMcCain.
Will any of Twitter potential buyers make it a forum for users of all political persuasions to enjoy free speech, or will the continue to ban people who object to the SJW agenda?
Trump, Inc. should own it (Score:4, Funny)
Given how yuuuuge the Donald has made Twitter, Ivanka, who runs their acquisitions, should be the one buying up the company, so that daddy can use a platform he owns
It can then be the Trump online channel! Screw Microsoft, Google, Verizon and... Salesforce (how on earth does Twitter have anything to do w/ Salesforce)?
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They'd feel compelled to rebrand it as Trump something or other, and no one wants that.
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Salesforce (how on earth does Twitter have anything to do w/ Salesforce)?
Among many other things that SFDC and Microsoft Dynamics CRM are used for, handling customer service communications is one that has in the last few years been expanded beyond email and IRL interactions.
I don't know the SFDC world, but I work in the MS camp and one addition from a few releases ago was the ability to measure "customer sentiment", by searching through Twitter, RSS and Facebook feeds. IIRC Linkedin was in a walled garden and could not be read.
What some Microsoft Partners were doing, for example
Finally! (Score:2)
App.net- I mean Ello- I mean Peach- I mean Yo- I mean... well, it's finally their time to shine!