Analyst: Twitter Just Lost A Potential Buyer

Analysts and investors have been debating for quite some time if

will ever sell itself to a larger internet peer or strategic buyer. According to RBC Capital Markets' Mark Mahaney, this debate could continue but investors can at least scratch

name off any list of potential buyers. Mahaney,

Monday morning suggested that Microsoft acquired a "good asset" in a "pretty good" when it agreed to pay more than $26 billion to acquire

.

The Microsoft - LinkedIn merger announcement is not even a few hours old but Mahaney is already speculating on what will be the next major M&A deal in the internet space. Mahaney pointed out that shares of Twitter were trading "materially" higher Monday morning buy more than 6 percent but the Microsoft - LinkedIn deal doesn't make the social media company any more likely to be acquired. "In fact, given the size of this deal, you probably just took away at least for the foreseeable future one of the potential buyers of Twitter," the analyst said. "We wouldn't be chasing that."