Disney is the latest to see Twitter as an acquisition target

Steven Loeb · September 26, 2016 · Short URL: https://vator.tv/n/4763

The company is reportedly working with a financial adviser to see if a bid makes sense

The acquisition of Twitter is starting to feel less like a question of "if," and more like a question of "who?"

Only days after the company was reported to be on the verge of receiving formal bids from at least two interested acquirers, Google and Salesforce, now another major corporation is said to be thinking about jumping into the fray.

Disney is working with a financial adviser to evaluate a possible bid for Twitter, according to a report out from Bloomberg on Monday.

This acquisition makes sense if you think of Twitter becoming more of a media company. That would certainly appeal to Disney, which owns both ABC and ESPN, and could be looking for a social media platform to leverage all of that content, especially as people have started to cancel their cable subscriptions.

ABC currently allows users to live stream its shows on its website, in certain markets, and to watch the most recently aired episodes ABC Overview, but buying Twitter automatically brings in over 300 million users already familiar with the service. 

Twitter has recently been making live video a central part of its platform, specifically when it comes to sports. That has included a deal with the NFL to air Thursday Night Football games. ESPN, meanwhile, owns the rights to Monday Night Football. So there are numerous parts here that could potentially fit together. 

There's also the fact that Jack Dorsey, chief executive officer of Twitter, currently sits on the board of directors at Disney, so the company would seem to have a potential in to getting access to Twitter.

In fact, Disney probably makes more sense than Google buying Twitter, and it certainly seems like a better fit than Salesforce. 

Google is probably the most frequently assumed target for such a purchase, mostly because of how badly that company wants to get social right, following the failure of Google+. There are even reports of such a takeover going all the way back to 2009

Last summer, when Twitter's stock dove under $30 for the first time ever, speculation of this sort about Google rang up again, but obviously came to nothing at the time.

So, Google is a company that has been talked about as a potential acquirer of Twitter for years; Salesforce, on the other hand, is a new player on the scene, and one that doesn't seem like as much of an obvious fit, given that Twitter is a consumer driven service and Salesforce is a cloud services provider for the enterprise.

Of course, Salesforce was a major player when it came to the acquisition of another social network, LinkedIn. Salesforce made a bid for the company, which eventually wound up being acquired by Microsoft for $26.2 billion in June. That one made more sense, given LinkedIn's focus on job recruiting, but perhaps Salesforce sees more uses for Twitter as an enterprise tool as well. 

While Twitter shot up 20 percent at the end of last week on the Google and Salesforce rumors, the Disney news didn't have quite the same impact, though investors were still happy. The stock rose 3.32 percent in regular trading on Monday, to $23.37 a share. The last time the company ended trading this high was all the way back in December of 2015.

One thing is becoming clear: these acquisition rumors are bolstering Twitter in a way that it has not been seen in a pretty long time. 

VatorNews reached out to Twitter, and to Disney, for comment, but neither company could be reached at this time. We will update this story if we learn more. 

(Image source: mouseinfo.com)

Support VatorNews by Donating

Read more from our "Trends and news" series

More episodes

Related News