Salesforce rules out Twitter bid

That leaves the possible number of interested buyers at … Zero.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has ruled out making a play for Twitter.

Speaking to the Financial Times, Benioff said “... we’ve walked away. It wasn’t the right fit for us.”

Twitter's 2015 revenue was US$2.21 billion, a decent sum. Sadly it's still losing money at a rate of about $100m a quarter. The micro-blog also faces slow user growth while the nature of the service means it doesn't attract as much attention as rivals with formats that encourage many minutes a day of interaction. The company's therefore spending up big on “traffic acquisition”. A graph of the service's share price looks good for tired cyclists, but not for investors.

The company's therefore been exploring a sale, with Google and Salesforce among those mentioned as suitors. The latter seemed a good home for the service, if only because it missed out on buying LinkedIn. Both have since passed on an acquisition, leaving Twitter with no clear route to exciting investors.

The Vultures are circling: your correspondent has foolishly followed a ShinyHappy™ self-help marketing spruiker type who last week sent a Direct Message urging me to follow him on other social media as “Twitter’s future is somewhat unclear. Lots of people are discussing the service as if it were on death’s door. While I don’t think that’s the case now, it’s best we’re prepared in case things truly don’t go well for our blue-birded social network.” ®