Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp has denied media reports it is set to buy a significant stake in the microblogging site Twitter.
Twitter shares jumped 14 per cent yesterday on the rumours that were also aired on a US television tech show and on News’ very own business site Marketwatch.com.
It’s been an interesting week for the social media site with widespread outages yesterday meaning many of its 320 million were unable to access the service.
Twitter’s shares – like the share market generally – have been in the doldrums and many insiders speculate the company was ripe for a takeover. Its shares have dropped from over $US30 this time last year and are presently trading around the $US17-18 mark – their lowest level since 2013.
However, a spokesperson for News has denied there is any truth in the rumour saying “the rumours were untrue”.
That’s not to say that News won’t buy some or part of the business in the coming months. Firstly, Rupert Murdoch is a huge fan of the site and tweets almost daily. In 2005 the company bought the ill-fated social media site MySpace for $US580 million but got its fingers severely burnt when it was forced to sell it six years later for just $US35 million.
