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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.
(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!)