Executives from Facebook, Google and other companies have held talks with Twitter over a possible acquisition of the micro-blogging service, pushing its estimated value as high as $US10 billion, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.
The figure is high for a company that only had revenue of $45 million last year, posted a loss, and estimates its revenue this year will be between $100 million to $110 million, the Journal said.
Despite what appears to be a rich valuation, Twitter executives are reportedly not interested in selling.
They believe they can build Twitter into a $100 billion company, the Journal said. That's one reason Twitter has been hiring engineers and other workers recently, in addition to a new executive team, including CEO Dick Costolo, formerly an executive at Google.
The newspaper did not say whether any formal offer was imminent.
Twitter is a popular micro-blogging website where people write short messages, or tweets, of up to 140 characters long about what they're doing, thinking and more. The site has become a useful tool for entertainers and sports figures to keep their fans appraised of where they are and their views on popular issues. Companies use Twitter to announce new products and research breakthroughs, and more, and the 175 million registered users on the site send out useful data such as traffic and surfing conditions to their followers.