TWITTER NOT FOR SALE DUDES

Twitter Co-Founder: “We’re Not For Sale”


May 6th, 2009 | by Adam Ostrow11 Comments
twitter logoYesterday, we saw a spat of rumors about Twitter being acquired following a report from Gawker that said Apple and Twitter were in “serious negotiations” about a deal in the $700 million range.

Today, making an appearance on The View, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone told Barbara Walters flat out that “We are not for sale.”

Frankly, we’re not surprised. On Tuesday, Technologizer offered a recap of a dozen other very sexy, high-profile Apple acquisition rumors that never happened. Meanwhile, the history of big tech companies acquiring social sites is not one full of success stories either.

For example, Yahoo recently announced it was shutting down Geocities, one of the first major acquisitions in the social space. But you don’t have to go back that far for other big company–big social site deals gone wrong. Google (Google reviews) shutdown both Jaiku and Dodgeball after acquisition, while MySpace (MySpace reviews) has languished and lost its lead in social networking since being acquired by News Corp.

Not to mention, the Twitter (Twitter reviews) guys clearly have a ton of conviction in what they’re doing. In spite of the fact the company is yet to reveal a business model, they do not appear to be tempted by the half dozen or so companies with the bankroll to make their small team very rich, very quickly. Further, their value is seemingly going up daily, as traffic has been growing at better than a 50 percent month-over-month clip lately.

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