Twitter refused to become part of Facebook

Reports claim that the Facebook wanted to buy Twitter as a firm in order to expand their business.


Afp January 03, 2011

NEW YORK: While communion status seems to have become the new vogue, individuals the world over are addicted to social networking sites; whether its Facebook or Twitter, belonging to a link online is the way to go. Pakistan immediately took to the Facebook trend in 2004 making it their legitimate right to pry into associates business and then came Twitter-- the next best way to eavesdrop. While celebrities use Twitter as an online public journal to update fans, Facebook is the holistic experience with pictures, animations, an event calendar, an in built messenger inbox and most importantly a custom made privacy settings to quarantine unwanted attention.

However, reports claim that the Facebook wanted to buy Twitter as a firm in order to expand their business.

The microblogging site Twitter turned down a $500 million purchase offer from the social networking site Facebook in 2008, according to the Financial Times.

In an interview with the British business daily published over the weekend, co-founder Biz Stone said Twitter wanted to become not just a popular site but a viable business, rather than be taken over by another company.

“We’ve created something that people are finding value in,” he said. “But we haven’t yet created a business out of this, and we really wanted to do that.”

According to the Financial Times, Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg offered $500 million in Facebook stock for Twitter.

But Stone said Facebook had nothing that Twitter’s three co-founders —Stone, Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey —wanted.

Other reports briefly added that Twitter is still not generating a handsome profit even after four years of its inaugural launch.

In mid-December, Twitter declared that it had received a major infusion of funds from a group of investors, which reportedly put a $3.7 billion value on the site.

Created in 2006 to exchange messages of no more than 140 characters, Twitter had already established a 175 million registration of users and last year the site had blown the internet away with a transmission of 25 billion “tweets.” Current statistics reveal that the site perpetuates 95 million messages a day.

It has pursued rapid growth over profits, but since last spring, it has brought in advertising revenues through paid for “promoted tweets.”

Published in The Express Tribune, January 4th, 2011.

COMMENTS (1)

QWERTY | 13 years ago | Reply love ya twitter. thanks for not getting sold to that big F.
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