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Why Disney, Google and Salesforce would be interested in buying Twitter – and what they might do with it

By James Treen, Social media manager, planning

September 27, 2016 | 4 min read

With the financial earnings reports earlier this year highlighting a stagnating user base and a series of product changes that have as yet failed to take off, such as its ‘Moments’ feature, one could be forgiven for thinking that Twitter may be losing direction and focus.

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However, the platform still remains an attractive social proposition with strength and power based in its ‘real-time’ feed.

Social media has become a product game or a game of scaling up, with Twitter losing significant ground here to Facebook and Snapchat – see this week's ‘Spectacles’ launch or the continued development of Instagram with ‘Stories’. This is where Twitter could do with some help.

An acquisition seems inevitable and the recent news of interest from Google and Salesforce came as no surprise, and in fact helped push Twitter's share price up 21 per cent in mid-day trading on Friday. Today's reported interest from Disney has perhaps raised a few more eyebrows.

So why the interest? The lure of data connectivity and ad dollars is an obvious one for all interested parties. However for Disney, the lure is in helping it focus its video distribution, the strength of Twitter’s real-time feed and its potential in the inevitable live streaming battleground that must have caught the imagination of Disney CEO Robert Iger. The move from Twitter into streaming sports events online is a good one although underdeveloped. Disney owns ESPN and recently invested in BAMTech, a streaming- media company which suggests a strong possible reason for acquisition.

Twitter also has huge presence on mobile devices and could help any company looking to gain advantage in mobile growth. Sadly, media owners do not have the greatest track record with social media. The disaster that befell Myspace with the News Corp acquisition in 2005 certainly springs to mind. However, this acquisition may just give Twitter the product boost it needs to survive in a highly competitive social landscape.

This recent interest from Disney could also put pressure on its other long-time suitors that are interested in an acquisition of Twitter.

With heavy investment from Facebook into chat bots and the Messenger platform, Salesforce has become very interested in Twitter as a similar means of customer service communications and perhaps using the database for intelligence purposes.

For Google, an acquisition would fill a very large social media-shaped hole left since Google+ failed to resonate with social audiences and could also help with its online advertising strategy that it delivers across YouTube, display and paid search. Google would see benefit from the extra AI insight into what’s going on in the world along with reactions and sentiment from people, while combining this data with AdWords and AdSense. Google may also be able to help solve Twitter’s stagnant user base problem.

Imagine a combined YouTube+Twitter where the slowest and fastest types of social media were brought together. We have already seen an update from Google with ‘YouTube Community’ that allows creators to share text, photos and gifs to instigate a greater connection with their audiences and perhaps this is where Twitter could also help. The much faster, real-time element that Twitter excels at would also allow YouTube to compete much better with Facebook, where spontaneous video consumption is far greater than the purposeful video consumption on YouTube. The constant conversation on Twitter could help drive more visits to channels where there is more going on between video uploads.

Every sale has its advantages and Google appears to be the best fit at this time but perhaps the relationship that exists between Disney’s Robert Iger and Twitter co- founder Jack Dorsey – and their shared passion for creativity, excellence and bold moves – will win out.

James Treen is social media manager, planning at J. Walter Thompson London

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