Walt Disney Co is reportedly mulling a bid for Twitter, joining Salesforce, Microsoft and Google as suitors for the social network. Bloomberg cited “people familair with the matter” that the entertainment giant has teamed up with a financial advisor to evaluate options after the micro blogging platform initiated its sale process. Twitter currently has a […]
Walt Disney Co is reportedly mulling a bid for Twitter, joining Salesforce, Microsoft and Google as suitors for the social network.
Bloomberg cited “people familair with the matter” that the entertainment giant has teamed up with a financial advisor to evaluate options after the micro blogging platform initiated its sale process.
Twitter currently has a market value of $16bn, following suggestions that Salesforce and Google are also interesting in aquiring the business.
Beyond its iconic movie business, Disney also owns a lot of companies including ABC News and ESPN Sports, as this tweet from Nick Bilton, Special Correspondent at Vanity Fair, notes:
From (high-up) people I've spoken to internally at Twitter, I've always heard Disney is the dream suitor. https://t.co/CBAqGaLe2Q
— Nick Bilton (@nickbilton) September 26, 2016
Adding Twitter’s real time news strengths to its stable of companies would give it a nice solid hold on informational services.
Each sale has possible advantages – the Salesforce and Alphabet negotiations were initiated by Twitter executives themselves, according to Reuters. Alphabet has been trying to get into social media since Google Wave, Google Buzz and more recently Google+.
Microsoft’s incentives would seem to be similar – the company’s recent $26.2bn acquisition of LinkedIn points toward a more aggressive social media strategy.
Salesforce can also incorporate the kind of data that Twitter generates into its software. Twitter’s acquisition would be closer to a merger for Salesforce, which is a far smaller company than Google.
