The board wants to conclude negotiations by October 27 – the date when Twitter reports its third-quarter earnings – people familiar with the matter told Reuters.
It’s seen as a big ask, not only because Twitter apparently only began seriously considering a sale in September, but also because several high-profile companies named recently as potential buyers have reportedly pulled out.
Google, for example, currently has no intention to acquire Twitter, sources told Re/code this week, while Apple, too, seems “unlikely” to make a bid. An insider told Re/code that Twitter should have “low expectations” of receiving an offer from the Cupertino-based tech titan.
Late on Wednesday it was claimed that another high-profile contender, Disney, had decided against making a bid. Disney was thought to be interested in using the microblogging platform to take its sports and entertainment content to a wider audience. But it, too, is reported to have lost interest.
That leaves American cloud computing firm Salesforce, which may be interested in pulling business intelligence from Twitter’s massive amount of constantly flowing data.
Of course, there’s no guarantee Salesforce, or any company, will acquire Twitter anytime soon – or even ever. There are even reports suggesting that at least two of Twitter’s leading executives have opposite opinions about what step to take next. Bloomberg said this week that current boss and co-founder Jack Dorsey wants to keep Twitter independent, while former CEO and co-founder Ev Williams would prefer to look more closely at the possibility of a sale.
Twitter has 313 million active users, but for a long time has struggled to build on those numbers at any decent pace, while revenue, too, has failed to rise in line with investors’ expectations.
Believing that a perceived complexity about the service may be discouraging people from joining, the company has been rolling out a slew of new features and changes to try to bring some order and understanding to the endless flow of incoming tweets. It’s also ramped up efforts to make the platform more attractive and engaging by incorporating more media-rich content. But despite the efforts, the company is still struggling to grow in the way it’d hoped.
