April 03, 2009

Reports on TechCrunch claim that Google is in advanced negotiations to acquire micro-blogging site Twitter.

Citing two separate sources, TechCrunch said that the asking price is more than the $250m (£170m) valuation that Twitter's recent round of funding would suggest.

A third source, however, recently added to the TechCrunch report, suggests that talks are only in the early stages.

Twitter has recently reworked its search feature, prompting many to think that this makes the firm more appealing to potential suitors. Search facilities have been added to the 'tweet' pages, and users can search tweets from this view. Twitter claims that the new additions were planned from the start.

Such features would have obvious benefits for marketing and advertising purposes.

"Twitter Search is an engine for discovering what is happening right now," said Twitter co-founder Biz Stone in a blog post.

Stone and co-founder Evan Williams have already sold Blogger.com to Google, and TechCrunch guesses that any deal would involve a straight cash or stock transaction.

However, other firms might also be interested in buying Twitter. "Where's Microsoft in all this? Letting Twitter go to Google only hurts them, badly, in the long-term search game. This is an asset they need to be competing for aggressively," the report said.

Google refused to deny the rumours. However, in a statement the firm said, " We don't comment on rumour or speculation".