Twitter Co-Founder Says No to Google, Apple, Microsoft Advances

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone reiterated in a May 6 television appearance that his popular micro-blogging site, which lets users post messages or “tweets” of 140 characters or less, is not for sale.

Asked by television personality Barbara Walters as to whether Twitter was indeed open to an acquisition by Google, Microsoft or Apple, Stone said, “We’re just getting started” as its own company.

“No,” he replied to the acquisition question.

Unconfirmed chatter has recently had Apple circling Twitter as a possible target. This follows on the heels of rumors, also unconfirmed, that both Google and Microsoft were interested in buying the site. Eric Schmidt did not touch on any talks in Google’s April 16 earnings call, and the rumors for the most part have proven unfounded.

According to research group ComScore, Twitter expanded its user base by 131 percent in March 2009, to 9.3 million users, up from 4.3 million in February. ComScore’s report, released in April, coincided with rumors that Google was in talks to acquire the site, although Biz Stone also reiterated at the time that Twitter intended to remain an “independent company.”

However, independent companies also need to generate revenue, and in that spirit, Twitter entered into a deal with Microsoft to sponsor a site, ExecTweets, that collects and displays the “tweets” of prominent business executives. Twitter has further plans for paid commercial accounts later in 2009.

The enterprise, recognizing Twitter’s value as a social networking site, has done its best to incorporate the micro-blogging service into many of its products, including Salesforce.com’s Service Cloud.