Twitter takeover being considered by Google, Salesforce, other tech firms - report
Several major tech corporations -- Google and Salesforce among them -- have allegedly expressed in buying Twitter, as much for the data the social network generates as its actual media revenue.
The company could receive a formal bid in the near future, sources told CNBC on Friday. One person claimed that the pace of talks is picking up, and a deal could be announced by the end of 2016.
The sources added that Twitter's board of directors are largely in favor of an acquisition. Despite the service's continued popularity, it has struggled with how to grow, and seen a number of high-level staff leave.
Earlier today Salesforce's "chief digital evangelist," Vala Afshar, took the unusual step of praising Twitter online after CNBC's news. That might suggest strong interest in a takeover, even though Salesforce is a largely enterprise-focused company.
It's unknown if Apple is among Twitter's interested parties. It failed to gain any traction with its past social media efforts, namely Ping and the Connect tab in Apple Music. In fact the recent refresh of Apple Music de-emphasizes Connect, hinting that Apple may be going in the opposite direction.
The company could receive a formal bid in the near future, sources told CNBC on Friday. One person claimed that the pace of talks is picking up, and a deal could be announced by the end of 2016.
The sources added that Twitter's board of directors are largely in favor of an acquisition. Despite the service's continued popularity, it has struggled with how to grow, and seen a number of high-level staff leave.
Earlier today Salesforce's "chief digital evangelist," Vala Afshar, took the unusual step of praising Twitter online after CNBC's news. That might suggest strong interest in a takeover, even though Salesforce is a largely enterprise-focused company.
Why @twitter?
1 personal learning network
2 the best realtime, context rich news
3 democratize intelligence
4 great place to promote others-- Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar)
It's unknown if Apple is among Twitter's interested parties. It failed to gain any traction with its past social media efforts, namely Ping and the Connect tab in Apple Music. In fact the recent refresh of Apple Music de-emphasizes Connect, hinting that Apple may be going in the opposite direction.
Comments
I would like to see LinkedIn and Twitter be merged, though. That makes sense.
Twitter could be great for interactive TV and Twitter data is very valuable for all sorts of big data analytics and machine learning.
Twitter could be a great services play for Apple.
Microsoft / LinkedIn should focus on integrating themselves and they would not know what to do with Twitter but then again I wonder about Salesforce's angle.
I do not see Apple purchasing Twitter. I will not be upset if proven wrong. Amazed. Not upset.
What exactly would Apple do with a 140-character communication system to meet its "social ambitions" (whatever those were)? Even Google and Microsoft -- almost entirely software companies -- couldn't make a go of their "social ambitions". Facebook has, for better or worse, run away with that market. Given that Facebook has aggressively pursued and bought high-priced social networking companies in the past (recall their $19B acquisition of WhatsApp a couple of years ago), the fact that they have had zero interest in Twitter tells us all we need to know about the quality of the asset.
How would it help the brand?
Could it generate profit?
These are the questions any company would need to ask. Google would do it just to acquire data. Apple is not in the habit of offering unprofitable products.
When Facebook acquired instagram, everyone abandoned it. It was a fad product to begin with.
When Yahoo acquired Tumblr, I stopped using it... well mostly everyone reduced their usage knowing how god-awful Yahoo has been about product management.
When Google acquired Youtube, it was largely independent until they tried to force G+ on everyone and turned it into a huge pain in the ass, and that also did nothing to curb the trolling on it. Google is now trying to turn Youtube into a social media platform (wtf google, you failed) so it would make sense for Google to try and acquire Twitter, but I have a feeling that they will screw it up, much like every acquisition, and people who already hate G+ will abandon it. Youtube is something that I think Google regrets buying much in the same way eBay regrets buying Skype. Back in 2007 there was much talk inside eBay about how eBay, Paypal and Skype were meant for each other, and now look at it.
When Microsoft bought Skype, it shutdown it's own MSN messenger service, but people started abandoning Skype for other products, eventually Slack becoming the winner. This is again, because everyone who has handled Skype has ignored the core technology (a peer to peer messaging/VoIP product) and tried to take the P2P aspect out of it.
Verizon bought AOL and is buying Yahoo, largely to expand their advertising base. If they bought Twitter you'd see Twitter become 60 second ads between tweets.
Of all the suitors, Salesforce is probably the worst one, they've acquired 40 companies and extinguished them in favor of their own brand. You'd see Twitter become "Salesforce social messenger" or some dorky name. When I think salesforce, I don't think of a successful cloud computing company, I think of the CRM software it started with.
So what is the lesson nobody seems to be learning here? You can't buy a good product and turn it into your vision. If you don't honor the original products vision, it decays rather quickly and is abandoned. "Your" (as in the acquiring company) vision for the product is stupid.