Editor’s note: This article was first published in February 2011. It is a news item with 2010-2011 figures for revenue, headcount and losses. Neither Facebook nor Google ended up buying Twitter, which went public in 2013 and was acquired by Elon Musk in 2022.
Twitter is considering “letting itself be acquired” by Facebook or Google, both of which are very interested in buying Twitter. According to TechCrunch, they have already entered a first round of negotiations, the kind that is supposed to stay secret, but someone always lets it slip.
Everything points to Twitter’s current inability to properly monetize the network. Although it made public, for the first time, revenue of $45 million, Twitter lost money this year after investing heavily in infrastructure.
On the other hand, Twitter has already received several million dollars from private investors and currently has a workforce of 330 employees. That’s no small number, considering it is similar to Facebook’s while its revenue is far lower.
Facebook will fight with everything it has to get the network, which wouldn’t be very healthy for the internet, since it would amount to a total monopoly of the internet.
Google, for its part, has said it has $35 billion to spend on new acquisitions, and acquiring Twitter would certainly open the door to success again, something it didn’t achieve with Google Buzz.
Honestly, I think Twitter would be in better hands if Google buys it, given that some of Twitter’s staff have already worked at Google and know how the company operates and what its policies are. Besides, Google has already given the network money so it can use its data for searches.
Time will tell who ends up taking over this network.
Further reading
Featured image: Tobias Kleinlercher / Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
.JPG){kind=link}