the art of merger and acqusition: the case of twitter and activerain

Everybody has been talking about the rumor (or plan) that google wants to buy Twitter.

It quickly came to mind not two years ago that another company wants to buy ActiveRain the deal went nowhere last year.

Well, first, the people are twitter are really smart. They created blogger and sold it to google. And five years later, twitter is just about to be taken by google again. Do not trust what the founder said: "we want to be independent." Having been a business broker for a while, I know that is an excuse.

I can write all day long discussing this topic but for this specific post, I want to say something about partnership and marketing.

One smart person once said, if you want a cat, you first need to ask for a tiger.

The twitter people surely understand this.

1, Twitter people know that even the fact that they are talking to google will generate enough buzz for marketing purposes. That is Smart 101.

2, Secondly, by offering a price high enough, this actually generates enough interests and demand from all other big players.

Now back to ActiveRain. I personally think the potential buyer of AR was/is not even as popular of ActiveRain. Experience told me that it is much easier to talk to a big guy than talking to a small guy. By talking to that company, ActiveRain already has put itself in a much lower position. That gives all future buyers a very very low starting point and super low expectations.

I have experienced and witnessed many business merger & acquisitions. Honestly, many M&A news are just news. They announce the news simply to gain market exposure.

That is strategetic thinking vs just quickly pocket money strategy.