Facebook Tried to Buy Twitter, But Failed

By Jane McEntegart, published on March 2, 2009 at 2:20 PM
Source: Tom's Guide US | Keywords: , , , , | Themes: Business, The Internet
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Last year there’s was a whole load of speculation of are they, aren’t they surrounding the possibility of a Facebook-Twitter acquisition. Now it looks as though the rumor mill may have been right all along.

Everyone was talking about how it was a match made in heaven. The already Twitter-like status updates on Facebook and the Tweets on the microblogging site were the basically same concept; acquiring Twitter could have been a very lucrative deal for the social networking site and it turns out the guys over at Facebook were on the same page as the rest of us.

Speaking in an interview with BusinessWeek, Facebook executive Peter Thiel confirmed that Facebook had tried to buy the microblogging site last year but had failed because the deal would have had to be based on Facebook stocks.

"It became pretty clear it wasn't going to happen," Thiel said. "The deal would have to be done with Facebook stock. And then you have to figure out how much the stock is worth."

Since no one seems to be able to figure out how much Facebook stock is actually worth, you can see why this would be a problem. The social network was rather erroneously valued at $15 billion in 2007. We say erroneously because Facebook valued itself internally shortly afterward and came up with the figure of $3.7 billion. Bit of a difference.

BusinessWeek reports (citing AllThingsD) that Facebook offered Twitter $500 million and although the company “liked the sound of that,” the folks at Twitter balked when Facebook said its stock was worth $8 billion to $9 billion. According to BW, Twitter's team knew that Facebook was letting employees sell stock on the secondary market at company valuations ranging from $2 billion to $4 billion. "We said it's not worth it," the Twitter representative says. "Don't treat us like children."

Facebook made another offer: $100 million in cash, with the rest made up in stock. The company said it would come up with the $100 million by selling more stock to outside investors. Twitter said the stock it received would have to be valued at the price Facebook shares garnered on the open market but that didn’t exactly fly with Facebook and that’s where the talks ended.

We think it’s sort of sad since the idea of a Facebook-Twitter mashup would be great if they could strike the right balance. What do you think, would a Twitter and Facebook in the one place be too much?

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Comments

sandmanwn 03/02/2009 8:35 PM
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crazy how glorified blog sites are worth 8 billion these days. no wonder we are in financial trouble. we don't make anything of real value but our blog sites are easily worth a few billion, lol.

sailfish 03/02/2009 9:32 PM
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Facebook, know this. Never send in a boy to do a man's job. Your offer was smoke, mirrors and more than a bit shady. Good for Twoto for pulling the curtain back revealing it for what it was, a sham.

bustapr 03/02/2009 9:32 PM
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I wouldnt buy this for 8 bill not even if I were a bored Bill Gates that didnt know what to do with all my money.

Blessedman 03/02/2009 11:35 PM
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Glorified forums...

neiroatopelcc 03/03/2009 11:56 AM
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I like facebook, as it's a great way to keep track of family activity, but I don't see why twitter would fit well into facebook? all it does is offer redundancy really.

Anonymous 03/03/2009 5:07 PM
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Never used twitter, it has no value in my life.

solymnar 03/03/2009 6:18 PM
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I'm with Sandman on this one.

If I'm concerned about what someone is doing at work then I'm on a team with them and we likely have checkpoints and meetings with details to keep track of each other's progress. If I want to know what a friend/family member is up to I can call and ask.

Beyond that I'd rather be interested in what I'm doing. Or specifically read forums on topics that are important to me. Micro keeping track of what other people are doing...is kind of along the lines of reality TV to me...why not get your own life? It's a lot more gratifying.

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