Rumors are swirling - swirling! - about Google and Facebook conducting clandestine meetings about about buying Twitter. According to the Wall Street Journal, "Executives at both Facebook Inc. and Google Inc., among other companies, have held low-level talks with those at Twitter Inc. in recent months to explore the prospect of an acquisition of the messaging service, according to people familiar with the matter."

For how much exactly? Billions. Somewhere around "$8 billion to $10 billion," if said "people familiar with the matter" are correct and/or real. Alexia Tsotsis TechCrunch says, "Even though it made $45 million in revenue (Promoted Trends has been selling out!), Twitter lost money this year, due to hiring and buying datacenters. Despite not being profitable, Twitter still values itself in the neighborhood of $8 billion to $10 billion, which at the high end is a little over 222 times its 2010 revenue and 100x its projected revenue ($100 million to $150 million) for next year."

Interesting.

Both Twitter and Facebook declined to comment. Duh.