WSJ: Twitter prime target for acquisition

Microblogging service Twitter has been targeted by companies for a takeover since it sprung the to forefront of media attention when it was founded in 2006. Twitter rejected a bid by Facebook in 2008, but reports out Thursday said that companies have reportedly tried to buy the company in recent weeks, offering bids as high as $10 billion.

Among other companies, The Wall Street Journal reports that executives from both Facebook and Google have met with Twitter's upper-level management to discuss the possibility of an acquisition; however, the talks have yet to produce any meaningful progress and are still ongoing, sources told the newspaper.

Twitter has yet to go public and has not generated excessive revenue, but valuations of the San Francisco-based company vary from $8 billion to $10 billion. "Are these prices justifiable based on financial multiples? No," Ethan Kurzweil, of Bessemer Venture Partners, said. Nonetheless, Twitter owns a lot of data on its users and has built a social service that is accessed daily by millions of people around the globe, making it mightily attractive to prospective buyers.

Google and Facebook have attempted to buy Twitter in the past, but the company could be more serious about being bought as it looks to cash in on the recent surge in valuations for technology companies. Facebook, for example, was recently valued at $50 billion - up from its $10 billion valuation back in mid 2009.