Who Wants To Buy Twitter?
There's a big question in the tech world: What will happen to Twitter?
While the social network has attracted millions of users since it launched in 2006, it has struggled to create the kind of value that investors want to see. Over the past year, the company's stock price has steadily dropped from around $50 per share to about $20. According to the New York Times, Twitter plans to cut 9 percent of its global workforce – or 350 jobs – in response to poor third-quarter results.
Company leaders have been seeking to sell Twitter, leading to endless speculation about who might want to make a bid – and whether anyone will see value in owning such a brand.
Recently, this blog wrote about the possibility that Disney might be interested. Ultimately, this deal never took place, with some speculating that Disney was turned off by the social network's unfortunate reputation for bullying and harassment on the part of some users, according to Bloomberg. In addition, both Salesforce and Google have been rumored to be considering a deal, but nothing concrete has been able to confirm this.
If none of those potential deals go through, Twitter appears to have other options. Observer reported that a number of Asian companies have been showing increasing interest in international acquisition deals. For instance, Tencent, China's largest social media company, recently become a majority owner of Finnish game maker Supercell. Meanwhile, the Japanese company SoftBank acquired British computer chip designer ARM Holdings this past summer.
Could any of these foreign companies be coming for Twitter? It is worth thinking about as the desire for global deals increases. Mergers and acquisitions play an important role in the digital economy, and ownership of these companies can shift rapidly.