Friday has been a good day for long-suffering Twitter Inc. (NYSE:TWTR) shareholders after shares of the social media network surged more than 19% on rumors the company could be bought out.
According to reports, there are several companies that could potentially be interested in scooping up Twitter. The first is a familiar one to those who have followed Twitter, Google. Many shareholders think Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) would be a terrific parent company because of its strong management team, a quality most think is currently lacking at Twitter.
Apple is another name that is constantly linked to Twitter, but there doesn’t appear to be much behind those rumors.
The suitor many feel is best positioned to take a run at Twitter is Salesforce.com (NYSE:CRM). Further adding to the speculation was a tweet from Vala Afshar, Salesforce.com’s Chief Digital Evangelist, which listed a number of reasons why companies value Twitter. It’s obvious what Afshar thinks of the rumors.
Investors weren’t so enthusiastic. Salesforce.com shares sank on news of its reported interest in Twitter, falling more than 5%.
Twitter has struggled during its three years as a publicly traded company. Many users have reported decreasing their use of Twitter because the anonymous nature of users leads to more abuse. Shares are down approximately 50% compared to their IPO price.
It has also struggled to get advertisers to spend on promoted tweets, coming short of revenue expectations seemingly every quarter. And it seems like the company has been in a constant state of management flux.
It has always seemed obvious a buyout was Twitter’s ultimate fate. We could be seeing that happen today.
