Not content with Marvel and Lucasfilms, Walt Disney Co. is evaluating a possible bid for Twitter:
Speculation that Twitter will be sold has been gathering steam in recent months, including last week's news of Salesforce's interest, given the social-media company's slumping stock and difficulties in attracting new users and advertising revenue. Disney, the owner of ABC and ESPN, could obtain a new online outlet for entertainment, sports and news. Jack Dorsey, chief executive officer of Twitter, is on the board of Disney.
[...] "It's a video distribution play," said James Cakmak, an analyst at Monness Crespi Hardt & Co. "What Disney has to think about is what is its place in a post cord-cutting world. They are investing in technology for distribution -- and this would give them the platform to reach audiences around the world."
Disney Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Bob Iger has a reputation as a strategic thinker with an appetite for bold bets, such as the $7.4 billion acquisition of animation studio Pixar in 2006, just months after he became CEO. With Disney's largest business -- cable TV -- losing viewers and facing more competition from online video services, Iger has invested in technology-related media businesses, including the Hulu video streaming service, digital media company Vice and Major League Baseball's BAMTech, which provides the platform for online video services such as HBO Now. Twitter has also partnered with with BAMTech for its live streaming.
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Re/code reports that potential buyers of Twitter, Inc. have backed away:
According to sources close to the situation, Google does not currently plan to make a bid for Twitter. While the search giant has been among the buyers considered most likely to be a contender for the social communications company, those familiar with the deal said that the company was not moving forward with an effort to buy it at this time.
In addition, several sources Recode has spoken to this week also said that Apple was unlikely to be one of the possible suitors, with one saying Twitter should have "low expectations" of getting an offer from the tech giant. Update: Disney, which had also considered a bid, is not going to make an offer, according to sources familiar with that company. That should tamp down the frenzied speculation around a possible Twitter sale since Salesforce began no-commenting noisily with regard to possible interest in acquiring it a few weeks ago.
Rumors followed by rumors have caused a rise and fall in Twitter's stock price:
Twitter Inc. shares plummeted on Thursday after it became apparent a sales process for the sputtering social-media company might not draw as many suitors as investors had hoped. Twitter stock, which had been marching steadily upward since news of a possible sale surfaced in September, fell 20% to $19.87. That brought the stock within 7% of where it traded before the leak. [...] Google's absence from the auction is a particular blow for Twitter. It has much deeper pockets than either of the other two possible suitors, and Alphabet sports a market value of more than $500 billion. Its dominance in search and advertising caused some analysts to speculate Google would be best suited to buy Twitter and find a way to make money off its legions of users.
Since launching its initial public offering in 2013, a series of management upheavals, product delays and muddled business strategies have complicated Twitter's effort to capture the world's mobile users and wring revenue out of them. The shares traded as high as $69 soon after the debut but have faded as growth in users and revenue slowed.
Previously: Disney Considering Bid for Twitter
(Score: 3, Funny) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday September 27 2016, @02:49AM
I hope the awful Disney do buy Twitter.
It will be as funny as that time the awful Rupert Murdoch paid some Nigerian scammers half a billion for Myspace.
(Score: 2) by Gaaark on Tuesday September 27 2016, @03:32AM
OMG, what is Mickey tweeting today! Your jaw will drop!
Tweet this, Disney.......
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @05:39AM
Your jaw will drop!
#Leprosyfetish
(Score: 4, Interesting) by RamiK on Tuesday September 27 2016, @03:55AM
Say this after the elections and SCOTUS appeal regarding the June 2016 net-neutrality ruling.
The Obama administration's strong net-neutrality position isn't shared by either the Democrats or the Republicans. So, you can fully except a free, federally funded "basic internet" initiative for under-privilege kids with a select few safe "content providers" from Hillary that will expand to include everyone in a year. Or, a deregulation of FCC rules that will allow ISPs to offer basic internet packages with "tailored content" and "select advertising networks" to make Trump's America great again.
compiling...
(Score: 3, Informative) by DeathMonkey on Tuesday September 27 2016, @05:50PM
Clinton strongly supports net neutrality [wikipedia.org].[494][495] Senator Clinton was a cosponsor of the Internet Freedom Preservation Act, also known as the Snowe-Dorgan bill, as an amendment to the Telecommunications Act of 1996, that protects network neutrality in the United States. The bill aims to protect internet consumers and small businesses from Internet service providers charging large companies different amounts for Internet access than smaller customers. Clinton has stated that the Internet must continue to use an "open and non-discriminatory framework" so that it may be used as a forum where "views are discussed and debated in an open forum without fear of censorship or reprisal".[496] In 2007, she stated, "I support net neutrality... [The Internet] does not decide who can enter its marketplace and it does not pick which views can be heard and which ones silenced. It is the embodiment of the fundamental democratic principles upon which our nation has thrived for hundreds of years."[496] While secretary of state, Clinton delivered a major speech (entitled "Remarks of Internet Freedom") in January 2010, declaring that "We stand for a single Internet where all of humanity has equal access to knowledge and ideas."[497] In her 2016 platform, Clinton proposed to defend and enforce "the FCC decision under the Obama Administration to adopt strong network neutrality rules that deemed internet service providers to be common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act."[494][495]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 28 2016, @09:00AM
Until the other side pays more.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Wednesday September 28 2016, @12:09AM
Which company is the ISP, Twitter or Disney?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by archfeld on Tuesday September 27 2016, @03:56AM
After having laid waste to all my childhood favorites Disney can ruin something that truly deserves it.
For the NSA : Explosives, guns, assassination, conspiracy, primers, detonators, initiators, main charge, nuclear charge
(Score: 3, Touché) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday September 27 2016, @05:25PM
For the longest time when my kids were younger I felt the absence of the Disney movies I loved when I was a kid, on services like Netflix and Amazon. Then recently I re-watched passages of Snow White and Sleeping Beauty, and you know what? They weren't classics. They only seemed that way to me as a kid because I didn't have a sufficiently broad context to judge them properly. Modern animations like "Home" are better than the Disney "classics." Better written, better animation, better messages, too. A few movies have stood the test of time. The Black Stallion is as good today as it was then. Even Disney's Fantasia is. But it's not worth tying ourselves in knots over with crippleware (DRM) or draconian IP law. Storytelling is an essential part of what humans do, and as long as there are humans they will tell stories and a few of them will even be great ones.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @04:00AM
or just a chip at the base of my spine?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @07:02AM
Stop being so melodramatic.
They will only require a daily stool sample if you opt-out of the hourly anal probes.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @05:52AM
They really are twitterpated.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday September 27 2016, @05:15PM
That's the reference I've used since Twitter began, and nobody else got it.
Bless you, AC!
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Tuesday September 27 2016, @07:23AM
Rule 34 here we come - Mickey and the rest in Disney-approved pr0n?
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 3, Interesting) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Tuesday September 27 2016, @11:45AM
I don't like Disney, but I give them credit for using their ESPN revenues to buy properties and create the next big thing. Any other company would have ridden ESPN into the ground and then complained about the economy, piracy, the weather, or whatever excuse they could think of. Disney knew ESPN wouldn't last, and bought up a bunch of superhero properties and started a movie empire, then bought Star Wars when the superhero thing was getting old. Now they're looking at post-cable content distribution for when cable collapses. Twitter, on the other hand, does not know what it is. It's floundering around like Google trying 1000 different things hoping something will stick. They're at least smart enough to have open bidding season, unlike Yahoo which rebuffed Microsoft. I guess people learned from that mistake.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 2) by bradley13 on Tuesday September 27 2016, @04:37PM
Yes, Twitter is smart enough to put itself up for bid. That said: this is a bit late, the bloom is off the rose. I'll bet that they are hoping for a price north of $20 billion. With roughly 300,000,000 users worldwide, turnover $2 billion, losing more than $100 million per year, any non-internet company would be valued at maybe 1/10 of that, maybe less. It will be interesting to see what they are actually offered.
I like Disney as a match. If you fire all the marketeers, close all the international offices (that do, um, what exactly?), and tell the techies to just keep the platform running smoothly, Twitter could actually make a bit of money. It would also provide Disney itself with a great venue for advertising all of its other properties.
Personal note: I dislike Twitter, because it's great strength used to be "free speech", and now they are starting to censor "offensive" viewpoints. Which is weird, because AFAIK no one forces to you follow someone whose views you don't like.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 2) by Capt. Obvious on Tuesday September 27 2016, @05:15PM
Disney would never fire all the marketeers for cost reasons. They may bring in better talent. Disney has the best marketeers in the world, and could really make Twitter valuable.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday September 27 2016, @05:17PM
If all they do is send out tweets that say, "Watch the new 'Frozen' sequel!" that 300 million user count will drop off a cliff.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Wednesday September 28 2016, @11:00AM
Well, if you think Twitter has too many people and they need to fire people, I guess Disney is the perfect buyer since they know how to purge workers.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 27 2016, @02:09PM
I thought I saw a puddy-cat!