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| Biz Stone co-founder of twitter |
WASHINGTON The microblogging Web site Twitter turned down a 500 million dollar purchase offer from the social networking site Facebook in 2008,according to the Financial Times. In an interview with the British business daily published over the weekend,co-founder and Creative Director,Biz Stone said Twitter wanted to become not just a popular site but a viable business,rather than be taken over by another company.
Weve created something that people are finding value in, he said.But we havent yet created a business out of this,and we really wanted to do that. According to the Financial Times,Facebook CEO and co-founder Mark Zuckerberg offered $500 million in Facebook stock to buy out the popular Twitter Web site.But Stone said Facebook had nothing that Twitters three co-founders Stone,Evan Williams and Jack Dorsey wanted.
The daily added,without elaboration,that Twitter still isnt turning a profit more than four years after it was created.
In mid-December,Twitter said it had received a major infusion of funds from a group of investors,which reportedly put a 3.7 billion dollar value on the site. Created in 2006 to exchange messages of no more than 140 characters,Twitter.com had 175 million registered users as of November 1,and transmitted 25 billion tweets last year.About 95 million messages a day are sent over the site. It has pursued rapid growth over profits,but since last spring,it has brought in advertising revenues through paid for promoted tweets. AFP