Twitter In Talks to Acquire Flipboard
Social network Twitter has been engaged in an ongoing series of talks to acquire Flipboard.
According to multiple sources, an all-stock deal that would value the company at over $1 billion.
The discussions have been pushed by Twitter CFO Anthony Noto, and have been taking place since the beginning of the year. This was because the network was facing increasing pressure from Wall Street to grow its audience and innovate its products.
But despite a flurry of activity more recently, sources said these talks between Twitter and Flipboard — who are partners on a number of different fronts — seem to be currently stalled.
An acquisition will bring an experienced product team — headed by well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur Mike McCue — to the company.
McCue has previously been a Twitter board member, who stepped down due to the increasing competition between Flipboard and the service he co-founded. With a reputation as a product genius in Silicon Valley, he would also be an obvious heir apparent to CEO Dick Costolo, who has been under siege from investors over the last six months.
Flipboard is backed by some of Silicon Valley’s most prominent venture capitalists and has over $160 million in investment.
However, people familiar with the company say its user numbers have leveled off recently, in part because its app is no longer automatically installed in Samsung phones. It’s also just increasingly hard to attract audiences and some think that even as good a news readers as Flipboard has a limited appeal.
Still, especially due to McCue, Flipboard is an attractive acquisition target and other interested buyers might include Google and perhaps Facebook.
