Sale or no sale, Twitter users are bound to see changes as the beleaguered communications service tries to broaden its appeal to more people and advertisers.
A new owner could clean up Twitter and curb some of the nastiness that's become synonymous with it. Or perhaps a new owner would just show more ads. Or let it languish while it mines the best of what Twitter now has into its existing products and services.
How might it change?
TWITTER BECOMES MORE LIKE ITS NEW OWNER, IF THERE IS ONE
Facebook's absorption of Instagram and WhatsApp in recent years could offer clues. Both services have kept separate identities, to an extent, and have experienced user growth. But slowly, they are acquiring Facebook-like features. For example, Instagram no longer presents feeds chronologically; they are now sorted much like Facebook's news feed, using some secret formula known only to Facebook.
STAYS THE SAME BUT WITH MORE ADS
Twitter has never turned a profit, and whoever buys it will need to fix this. That means boosting the user base, so advertisers would follow. That also could mean better targeting, so that ad rates go up.
Google, anyone? The search giant is the leader in online ads. Imagine what its might and muscle could do to Twitter's ad business. YouTube hardly had any ads when Google bought it; now, ads are so prevalent that YouTube is able to charge $US10 ($A13) a month for an ad-free version called Red.
A TOOL FOR BRANDS, NOT REVOLUTION
Jonathan Cowperthwait, a Twitter user since 2008, said he'd be worried if Google bought Twitter because the online search giant "is the worst" at social services that aim to foster online interactions, beyond email. Its Google Plus service never took off; Orkut and Dodgeball closed. Cowperthwait said rather than let Twitter live independently, Google might "try to shoehorn it back into their own social product."
Salesforce, a company that provides internet services to businesses, has also been mentioned as a contender, leading to a lot of head-scratching among users. Would Twitter become a business product, used for customer service and marketing instead of revolutions, neo-Nazi memes and political outbursts?
"Salesforce is a very technology-driven company," eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson said. "It seems they would want (Twitter) mostly for the data that Twitter has."
THE LITTLE BIRD FALLS OUT OF THE NEST
Remember MySpace? It was - the - social network before Facebook came along. News Corp, the stodgy media conglomerate, bought it for $US580 million in 2005. But users started falling off as MySpace failed to keep up with Facebook's speedy innovations. After layoffs and failed relaunches, News sold the fallen giant for $US35 million in 2011, and that was just about the end of it.
It's not unthinkable that Twitter could suffer the same fate under a big media company.
