November 25, 2008
According to Kara Swisher, about three weeks ago Twitter rejected a deal in which Facebook offered to acquire it for $500 million of its stock, which also included a cash component.
Swisher reports that the deal broke down for a number of reasons, perhaps the most prominent of which was timing: " Well, as is usually the case, (the deal falthered) over price–was $500 million worth of Facebook stock actually worth $500 million?–and the typical concerns about integration and costs.
But, more important, it seems, was a feeling among Twitter investors and execs that the start-up should still take a shot at building its revenues–there are none right now–as well as it had done at building its growth."
To read the full piece, click here.
Comments | 6 Total
November 25, 2008 at 12:41pm by Brendan Collins
Smart move by Twitter. Who knows what Facebook stock is really worth? On top of that, it's unlikely that any company this big will be worth a serious investment during these tough economic times. Twitter's best bet is to stay above the Facebook fray and do its own thing.
November 25, 2008 at 12:54pm by Quinn Kuiken
I disagree. This is a failure on the parts of both the FB and Twitter management. FB for offering such an amount of money for a company with a very weak business model, which is especially scary in this economy, and Twitter for walking away from a chance to get anything for their product. I would have taken the money and ran.
November 25, 2008 at 1:44pm by south hollywood
Twitter is a small almost meaningless application that Facebook could and will easily match and beat with its more
robust features. Twitter that.
November 25, 2008 at 4:06pm by Faryl Zaklin
I'd prefer to see twitter aligned with a more "agnositic" social media tool such as friendfeed vs. one particular service such as facebook. Agree that twitter will need to find a business model eventually (soon?) but would be leery at ways facebook might use the twitter information/service for monetization. I dread the day I get bombarded by "grow a dinosaur egg" or "zombie" requests every time I log into twitter!
November 26, 2008 at 12:02am by Ed Shaz
@ south hollywood
Twitter will be adopted by the entire WWW.
Facebook, will not.
Thank goodness a deal did not emerge before
the originators can achieve build-out.
November 26, 2008 at 6:44am by Ben Drury
Twitter is growing and taking an offer too early could be bad for business.