According to market reports, rumors of the stock buyout drove the price of shares up as high as 20 percent in early morning trading. So far, “people familiar with the matter” have said the company has the potential to sell for around $26 per share, but has been recently cited as having slow revenue growth in its latest earnings report.

The idea of a real-time information company like Twitter being acquired by Salesforce or Google brings several interesting avenues of management using artificial intelligence, although this also has the potential to quickly backfire without careful management adhering to strict policy limits. We have seen an example of this recently with Facebook’s automation of Trending news, which previously contained topic descriptions selectively curated by employee staff using manual editing procedure.

Salesforce currently uses AI management software that automates tasks with machine learning, natural language processing and context cues, while Google has likely developed tens of thousands of machine learning algorithms over the past decade and a half, some of which could prove to be useful for understanding context, personal interests, and even motives, within scope of careful privacy policy considerations.

More interestingly, another report claims that Twitter’s board of directors are “keenly interested in being bought out,” suggesting the company’s recent stock performance has not been easily correctable solely among corporate management. As of now, expectations suggest an acquisition may happen before the end of the year.



Twitter stock chart, CNBC (September 23, 2016)

Salesforce stock was down 5.6 percent on Friday, while Google’s share price remained flat. Meanwhile, RBC Capital analyst Mark Mahaney downgraded Twitter’s stock by 25 percent to $14 because of slow advertisement revenue, relating to the company’s most recent quarterly report showing slow revenue growth since its IPO in 2013.