No one’s claimed a sale is going to take place – much the opposite, in fact – but if new rumors are to be believed, two very important corporations are interested in paying top dollar for Twitter. Facebook and Google have supposedly both been involved in discussions in which figures as high as $10 billion came up.
A Wall Street Journal article stated this morning, "Executives at both Facebook Inc. and Google Inc., among other companies, have held low-level talks with those at Twitter Inc. in recent months to explore the prospect of an acquisition of the messaging service, according to people familiar with the matter."
Then the article continued, "[W]hat’s remarkable is the money that people familiar with the matter say frames the discussions with at least some potential suitors: an estimated valuation in the neighborhood of $8 billion to $10 billion."
By contrast, when Twitter raised $200 million in December, investors only agreed to a valuation of $3.7 billion. So either Facebook and Google are willing to pay a huge premium, or they have a much higher opinion of the company.
But Twitter’s apparently counting on a lot of growth taking place. Again turning to anonymous "people familiar with the situation," the WSJ article indicated that Twitter’s interested in becoming a $100 billion company. (Amazon’s market cap is $83 billion and Google’s market cap is $196 billion, to put that in perspective.)
This could all point to a period of serious prosperity or another huge bubble, depending on your outlook.