Google, Salesforce and Verizon in the frame for Twitter acquisition

Founder and CEO Jack Dorsey effectively puts Twitter up for sale - and the shareholders approve

Twitter has effectively been put up for sale by its founder and CEO Jack Dorsey, with Google, Salesforce, Verizon and Microsoft all being mooted as interested buyers.

US television network CNBC reported that the company is in discussions with several tech giants as it attempts to secure the best deal for investors.

A sale would not be a huge surprise as Twitter has been struggling financially for some time, unable to monetise its somewhat limited platform in the same way that other social networks, particularly Facebook, has done.

User growth has slowed, too, which has made advertisers less keen to use the platform as its reach remains far below that of others.

The problems led to founder Jack Dorsey returning to the company last year as CEO. Dorsey has tweaked the platform in a number of ways in a bid to improve engagement and user numbers, such as removing media content from the 140-character limit.

News of the potential buyout sent shares in Twitter soaring by as much as 20 per cent as investors clearly see this as the best way for the company to escape its current woes.

Those in the running would all have uses for Twitter. Verizon is already on an acquisition spree, most notably spending $5bn on several Yahoo assets, while Microsoft also sees access to social data as key to the future. Microsoft spent $26bn on LinkedIn in pursuit of this goal earlier this year.

However, Salesforce's involvement was somewhat complicated when the firm's chief digital evangelist, Vala Afshar, went as far as posting on Twitter why he thinks it is such a great platform.

Whether he would do this during discussions about buying the company seems unlikely, and he later issued a further messaging explaining why he had posted the original message.