Internally, the company’s leadership is reportedly at loggerheads over its future. Dorsey wants it to remain independent, but the Twitter board (and co-founder Evan Williams) have agreed to evaluate offers from prospective suitors, including Google, Salesforce, Disney, and other rumored parties.
At this crucial juncture in its decade-long history, the company is very much in disarray as confidence in its current CEO wanes. In response, the Twitter board is now consulting with external advisers on how to deal with the internal disagreement over a possible sale, according to Bloomberg. Twitter has continually released statements refusing to comment on what it terms “rumors and speculation.”
For his part, Dorsey is reportedly adamant that Twitter should remain on its current path in order to reap the benefits of recent improvements to its core experience and live video.
Live-streaming in particular has restored some faith in Twitter’s future, but Dorsey wasn’t alone in spearheading that strategy. It is now being reported the company’s CFO Anthony Noto secured the NFL live video deal thanks to his close ties with that organization. Thursday Night Football streams have thus far pulled in solid numbers for Twitter — the first game attracted 2.3 million viewers, followed by 2.4 million for the next broadcast.
Dorsey’s unwavering faith in the format led his company to release a number of new Twitter apps for Apple TV, Xbox One, and Fire TV that focus purely on live-streams and spectatorship. With additional news, media, and sports broadcasts being added to its schedule, advertisers will undoubtedly be intrigued by the company’s live-streaming expansion.
The big question is whether Twitter has time to wait for its big play to unfold? Investors — whose worries can mainly be attributed to the site’s flat user numbers over the previous two quarters — don’t think so. Earlier this week, one of the platform’s biggest backers Chris Sacca claimed he’d been selling his Twitter stock. A billionaire venture capitalist, Sacca also added his two cents on the company’s possible takeover.
“Twitter can be complementary to many of those companies, there’s no doubt about it. It has a unique set of data that nobody else has in the world, and it has it faster than anybody else in the world,” Sacca told CNBC.
Additionally, Sacca claimed Facebook might also be interested in Twitter, purely in a “defensive” manner, in order to stop other companies getting their hands on its data.
It’s been a tumultuous time at the top for Dorsey, but he likely knew what to expect when he returned to the Twitter fold. To this day, most onlookers have struggled to define what exactly Twitter does. To his credit, Dorsey has attempted to fix that. If he ends up losing the battle for his company’s independence, another firm will inherit the same problems. In Dorsey, they may have the one person who can help them to grasp the challenges they face.
