Is Salesforce Eyeing Twitter For Acquisition?

The hot chatter on the street in New York and Silicon Valley this weekend was that Twitter is officially going up on the block for sale. This rumor, of course, should be taken with a large grain of salt, insofar as it has become something of a recurring classic.

The latest round of rumors about Twitter’s slow march to acquisition comes care of CNBC and its reporting that bids are starting to roll in from potential buyers. CNBC’s list includes Salesforce and Google.

There is also an outside chance that Verizon might be in the mix, though Verizon is in the process of acquiring Yahoo (and the biggest data breach in history), so it is possible it has a bit too much going on right now to try to tame Twitter.

As of now, Twitter’s market cap clocks in at $13.3 billion, with prices up nearly 22 percent on Friday (Sept. 23) on sales rumors.

How much of this is credible remains to be seen, and who is really interested in buying also seems an open question. Google and Salesforce seem sincere; Microsoft, on the other hand, may simply be hoping to push up the price to push Salesforce out of the deal.

“At this moment, Microsoft has nothing to share,” a spokesperson said when reached for comment.

Salesforce, admittedly, seems like the odd player out here, given it only has about half of Twitter’s market cap currently in its own cash reserves. To make the purchase, it’d need to raise the funds (in an all-cash deal) or offer Twitter a lot of shares. It would also be Salesforce’s biggest buy to date, and it’s already spent $4 billion this year.

Then again, Salesforce did move on LinkedIn. Microsoft just moved more effectively with an offer of $26.2 billion.

Salesforce could use Twitter to expand significantly into a much different business area and business model. For example, it could help it really light a fire under its new Einstein Big Data platform with a vast infusion of real-time data. Twitter also has customer service applications via Gnip.

Google remains the favorite as it has a lot of cash on hand to finance the acquisition — $73.1 billion, by one estimate earlier this year. It also has a long-term goal of getting a tighter hold on social media, which (other than YouTube) the firm has struggled with.

So, is it really happening this time?

The early story is that Twitter’s board is ready and eager to see bids, though CNBC did hedge by noting that no official news may be up for grabs until the end of the year.