David Faber and Anita Balakrishnan, reporting for CNBC:
Twitter shares surged Friday after sources said the ailing social media company moved closer to being sold.
The sources said the company has received expressions of interest from several technology or media companies and may receive a formal bid shortly. The potential suitors include Google and Salesforce.com, among other technology companies, sources said.
If this happens, I sure hope it’s Salesforce that buys them, not Google. The news was taken seriously enough that Twitter’s share price closed up 21 percent for the day.
I would much prefer it was a communications, media company, or publishing company, like AT&T, MSNBC, or Advance Publications. For Google, Twitter is a stream to fit ads into; for Salesforce, perhaps a research tool? (Still not entirely sure the Salesforce bid makes any sense.) I’d be much more inclined to use Twitter if it became a communication product, news distribution tool, or a content generation platform, not another advertisement (and therefore surveillance) platform. Ideally: a public utility for free speech funded by the people.