Twitter to be bought by Facebook or Google? Silly money bandied around
The mighty powers of Google and Facebook are in talks with the blue bird of Twitter about an acquisition following Twitter's 2010 evaluation of $10bn. Are we to finally see a deal go through?
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Twitter has reportedly held talks with various firms -- including the big boys of Google and Facebook -- about a potential acquisition over the past few months.
Although reports from the Wall Street Journal suggest these talks have so far been fruitless, it's amazing to see Twitter's valuation rising from its $3.7bn estimate of last year to a frankly preposterous $8bn-$10bn now, which would make it the richest little blue bird in existence.
Google and Facebook are unsurprising suitors for Twitter as both firms have reportedly made bids for the firm before now. In 2008, Facebook made an offer on Twitter for $500m in Facebook stock, which came to nothing. Silicon Valley was aflame that year with rumours of various Sylvester-like attempts from Google to get its mighty mitts around the little bird, but Twitter could not be caged and Google had to go back to its world domination drawing board.
Twitter pumps out around 95m tweets a day from its 175m users worldwide, providing exciting links to videos of cats, as well as more useful services to democratic protests, as we saw recently in Egypt.
These rumours have surfaced so many times before that it's difficult to gauge whether such a deal will ever be made and we see Google declare itself Supreme Master of Everything in Existence, or if Twitter would rather watch its value climb a few more billion dollars and catch up with Facey-B and the G-Dog next year.
The valuation placed on Twitter is also difficult to assess, as it's largely based on the belief that its size is an indication of its money-making potential. Twitter is currently posting significant losses due to large spends on staff and data centres.
Facebook and Google would probably want to see it raking back a substantial amount of cash for their multi-billion dollar investment, meaning we should be prepared to see substantial changes if a deal does go through -- although that hasn't been the case with the staggeringly costly YouTube.
What do you think of the talks? Do you see Twitter being bought out and ripped apart to facilitate the growing wallets of Facebook and Google, or would you rather the bird flew free for years to come? Let us know in the comments below.