According to a report Thursday in The Wall Street Journal, Facebook and Google remain palpably interested in a possible acquisition of Twitter.
While the WSJ confirms that executives at Facebook and Google have held low-level talks with the powers-that-be at Twitter, the talks have so far “gone nowhere.”
But that is likely to change as Twitter’s growth and valuation continue to leap off the charts. Some now value the microblogging giant to be worth upwards of $10 billion.
This for a company that, people familiar with the matter said, had 2010 revenue of $45 million—but lost money as it spent on hiring and data centers—and estimates its revenue this year at between $100 million and $110 million.
For now, none of the players related to the matter of a possible takeover – Google, Facebook, and Twitter itself – are talking about finances, valuations and possible acquisitions. But as the Wall Street Journal reports, there’s a palpable that a major deal could realistically be brewing – even if it means nothing more than a possible IPO for Twitter.
Twitter’s executives and board are said to e working feverishly on building a “large, independent company.” People familiar with the situation said the company “believes it can grow into a $100 billion company.”
Sources familiar with the situation tell The Wall Street Journal that Twitter’s new ad service, Promoted Trends, has been selling out its inventory every day. Similarly, Promoted Tweets and Promoted Accounts are also “doing brisk business.”
“The company is having great ad-sales momentum right now, but we still think they need to do something big to increase usage and get more people seeing and interacting with tweets,” said Debra Aho Williamson, an eMarketer analyst. “Most of their advertisers are just experimenting at this point; the challenge will be to get those advertisers to come back and buy more,” she said.