Twitter founder comments on Google takeover
by Stevie Smith - Apr 6 2009, 15:15
Twitter remains coy over Google acquisition. Image: AMagill/Flickr.
Having recently resisted the sizable financial takeover offer dangled before it by Facebook, micro-blogging phenomena Twitter has again been placed beneath the acquisition spotlight following rumours of a $250 million USD bid from search titan Google.
However, despite numerous reports posted late last week suggesting that a deal between the two parties was close to completion, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone has since come forward to offer a fairly non-committal reaction to the mounting speculation – which will likely do little where quashing chatter is concerned.
Writing on the official Twitter blog in a post titled “Sometime We Talk,” Stone offered that “it should come as no surprise that Twitter engages in discussions with other companies regularly and on a variety of subjects.”
Stopping short of revealing the names of specific companies and the subjects that might be open for discussion, Stone instead echoed comments made last week on The Colbert Report, when he insisted that it’s Twitter’s aim to “build a profitable, independent company” that remains based in San Francisco.
“We’re just getting started,” added Stone in relation to Twitter’s relative youth in the marketplace. “We’ve got just over 30 employees now, and we’re working out of a loft in San Francisco’s SoMA neighborhood.”
Interestingly, Chloe Albanesius of PCMag notes that Stone’s post includes notification of several open positions within Twitter, one of which just so happens to be for a director of strategic partnerships.
Fast becoming a desirable acquisition target, recent year-on-year audience figures for Twitter saw the micro-blogging service accrue a huge 1,382 percent increase, rising from 475,000 users in February of 2008 to 7.04 million in February of 2009.
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