Twitter, the social media company vilified by many for its tax break in SF but also seen by many others as a bellwether for the tech industry as a whole, is reportedly going to be considering acquisition offers at its board meeting this Thursday, at least according to Recode. This comes after board member and onetime CEO Evan Williams sat down with Bloomberg last week saying while Twitter is "Still an incredibly large service and an incredibly valuable service," it "can be a lot more valuable," and the board needs to "consider the right options" in thinking about its future.

Per Recode, those options include a potential sale to Google/Alphabet ("an unusual scenario one source mentioned in which it becomes part of some Alphabet media spinoff"), a sale to Apple, or even a sale to Rupert Murdoch's News Corp.

Officially Williams said "No comment" when the Bloomberg reporter asked if Twitter was intending to remain an independent company.

Ahead of a potential sale, Twitter may be considering getting leaner, as insiders still seem to say the company is too bloated despite the eight percent staff layoff last fall. That may entail selling off discrete assets like Vine, and/or another round of layoffs, and according to Recode, via multiple sources, "Some employees are worried about this."

At the moment, it's looking like Twitter could command an $18 billion sale price, despite the fact that the company is consistently losing money every quarter.

"The thing that Twitter provides to the world as a real-time information layer is incredibly valuable, and can be a lot more valuable," says Williams. "It's a matter of innovation and development."

After hitting some all-time lows this year and last, Twitter's stock price has rebounded a bit on rumors that they're mulling a potential sale, and is now up near $20, about 40 percent higher than it was back in May. Newly worsening press this summer about Twitter's mishandling of trolls of cyberbullying has, perhaps, motivated the board to act quickly as users have becoming increasingly restless about the balance they may want to strike between untethered free speech and the (relative) decorum maintained on other social media platforms.

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