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"Twitter has reportedly been holding talks with potential suitors, including Google and Facebook, about a sale valuing the micro-blogging website at up $10 billion (\u00A36.2bn).  According to the Wall Street Journal, sources claim that early talks between the loss-making social media site and interested parties have taken place over the past few months, but have so far gone nowhere. What has been agreed, though, is that Twitter has an estimated valuation of between $8bn and $10bn. When Twitter secured $200m of new venture capital funding in December last year, the micro-blogging site was valued at around $3.7bn.  However, the higher valuation reflects the investor rush on social media sites, including Facebook recently raising $1.5bn in a deal that valued the company at $50bn, up from just $10bn in 2009. Both Google and Facebook are understood to have previously considered a bid for Twitter, which has 175m registered users sending 95m tweets every day.  In 2008, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is believed to have offered Twitter&amp;#039;s founders $500m in Facebook stock for the site, but the deal ultimately collapsed. Google also recently mounted a $6bn takeover bid for Groupon, the Chicago-based online discount company. However, the bid was rejected as Groupon intends to launch an initial public offering, while business network LinkedIn is mounting a similar action. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.digitalspy.com/tech/news/a303104/twitter-in-facebook-google-sale-talks/>