When it comes to social networks, Apple has always cozied up to Twitter, but it turns out their relationship might have been a little more serious than we all thought. A while back, Apple considered offering several hundred million dollars for a stake in the micro-blogging platform.
The New York Times broke the news with information from unnamed sources who said the considered offer was at least in the hundred million dollar territory, a number which would have put Twitter at somewhere near a $US10 billion valuation. At the moment, however, there are no negotiations being held between the two giants.
It’s not surprising that Apple might want a piece of Twitter considering that the two have a pretty good rapport already. That’s not to mention that Microsoft has (part of) Facebook and Google has Google+, so Apple’s sort of out in the cold. An offer in the hundreds of millions range wouldn’t be a very big deal for Apple either, considering it’s sitting on roughly $US100 billion in liquid assets.
Should the offer come back up, Twitter’s opinion on the matter may have changed a bit now that the Facebook IPO has shown that going private can be iffy for even the largest of social networking giants. In any event, things are on ice for now, and even if they weren’t it’d be pretty unlikely to change for any of us work-day-users. Unless Apple bought Twitter and forced them to reinvent Ping, but surely no one could be so cruel. [The New York Times]
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