Facebook Tried Buying Twitter In 2008

The micro blogging site Twitter announced yesterday that it turned down a $500 million purchase offer from the social networking site Facebook in 2008,

In an interview with the U.K based business daily published over the weekend, co-founder Biz Stone said

wanted to become not just a popular site but a viable business, rather than be taken over by another company. “We've created something that people are finding value in,” he said. “But we haven't yet created a business out of this, and we really wanted to do that.” According to the Financial Times,

CEO and co-found, Mark Zuckerberg, offered $500 million in Facebook stock for Twitter. However, Stone said Facebook had nothing that Twitter's three co-founders; Stone, Evan Williams, and Jack Dorsey wanted. The daily added, without elaboration, that Twitter still is not turning a profit more than four years after it was created. In mid December, Twitter said it had received a major infusion of funds from a group of investors, which reportedly put a $3.7 billion dollar value on the site. Created in 2006, Twitter had 175 million registered users as of Nov. 1, and transmitted 25 billion “tweets” last year. About 95 million messages a day are sent over this site. Twitter has pursued rapid growth over profits, but since last spring; it has brought in advertising revenues through paid for “promoted tweets”.