Stop the Rumor Mill: Twitter Not for Sale

Industry gossip has had everyone from Google to Apple looking to buy up social messaging service Twitter, but Twitter co-founder Biz Stone says it's not for sale.

There’s no denying that in the last few months, micro-blogging and social-networking service Twitter has broken out of the Web 2.0 world and into mainstream mass media, with Ashton Kutcher going to war with CNN and Oprah very publicly getting her tweet on. As such, the company has been the subject of a vast number of rumors and reports, the most persistent of which have listed Google, Microsoft, and even Apple as potential suitors for the company. But in an interview on the popular morning chat program The View—there’s some mainstream attention—Twitter co-founder Biz Stone had a one-word answer when asked if the company was for sale: “No.”

“We’re just getting started,” Stone added. “The company is two years old, we have so much to do, so much product stuff to fix, and so much growing to do.”

Twitter actually turned down an acquisition offer from social networking site Facebook, reported to have been in the range of $500 million. However, the service—which is based on users passing around 140-character “tweets” about their activities—has actually never made any money. Using Twitter is free, and the site doesn’t currently carry any advertising—although many of its users tap in via mobile phones and custom clients, which might make site-based advertising a non-starter.

Twitter is currently looking at ways to monetize the service.

Before Twitter, Stone was involved in building services like Odeo, Xanga, Obvious, and the Google-acquired Blogger.