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Tag: Twitter Acquisition

  • Elon Musk’s Twitter Cancellation Letter

    Elon Musk’s Twitter Cancellation Letter

    Sometimes legal letters can be an interesting read! Elon Musk’s cancellation letter to Twitter by his legal team may be a crushing blow to Twitter’s business, not just this deal.

    Musk’s ending of his acquisition of Twitter is centered on the company’s mDAU as reported in their SEC filings… and that is key. If Musk can prove that Twitter misrepresented investors in their official filings with the SEC then not only is Musk off the hook for any end-of-deal damages but Twitter could be subject to a not-so-friendly SEC investigation.

    For its part, Twitter continues to stand by its claim that less than 5% of monetizable daily active users are spam or bots and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the deal.

    “The Twitter Board is committed to closing the transaction on the price and terms agreed upon with Mr. Musk and plans to pursue legal action to enforce the merger agreement. We are confident we will prevail in the Delaware Court of Chancery,” tweeted Twitter Chairman Bret Taylor.

    Elon Musk says in his filing that it appears that Twitter is dramatically understating the proportion of spam and false accounts represented in its mDAUcount:

    “Preliminary analysis by Mr. Musk’s advisors of the information provided by Twitter to date causes Mr. Musk to strongly believe that the proportion of false and spam accounts included in the reported mDAU count is wildly higher than 5%,”

    The letter purports that Musk’s acquisition team was not provided the key data that they requested and not in a usable format for them to further assess whether the fake accounts included in their mDAU stat is in fact lower than 5% as claimed by Twitter in all of its SEC filings. The mDAU stat is key to predicting the success of Twitter since 95% of its revenue comes from advertisers and fake people don’t convert to purchases.

    Another key aspect of the filing is Musk’s assertion that his team didn’t receive all of the Board materials they requested related to the Board members conversations about the mDAU metric and their calculation of the number of spam and false accounts.

    Why is this key? If Musk can show that Board members themselves had concerns about the accuracy of the “less than 5% mDAU are fake” metric then Musk doesn’t have to prove the stat is wrong, he can just point to Board statements. Musk did not provide any evidence that the Board in fact did discuss this issue substantively, but one assumes that because this stat is key to their business and their stock price, it’s likely they did to some extent. What was said in these possible discussions is key.

    Additionally, anything said by Board members or staff that counters the “less than 5% mDAU are fake” guidance by Twitter in SEC filings and in public statements would be evidence for any future SEC filings.

    581832232-Musk-SEC-Twitter-LetterDownload

  • Twitter Could be Acquiring Sense Networks

    The company has given no official word on the matter, but there’s a rumor floating around that Twitter might be interested in acquiring New York-based Sense Networks.

    According to Tech Crunch, the two companies are hammering out the details of a possible acquisition, which could be wrapped up before the end of June.

    Here’s how Sense Networks describes what they deliver for clients:

    Sense Networks applies big science to mobile location data for predictive analytics in advertising. Sense Networks adds rich user behavior to location data to deliver actionable, predictive targeting “beyond place.”

    The company’s technology platform, MacroSense, receives streaming location data from mobile phones in real-time, processes the data in the context of billions of historical data points, and analyzes it to better understand human activity.

    Currently, Sense Network offers two products based on the MacroSense platform. The first is AdMatch, a mobile ad network that uses predictive location and behavioral targeting to match consumers to the most relevant offers from local merchants.

    The second is AudienceSense, which helps publishers better monetize their audience by building predictive, location-centric behavioral segments on their own data.

    Any additional details on the rumored acquisition are hard to come by, but we’ll keep you posted on any further news that comes out of the negotiations. Hopefully we’ll hear something soon.

  • Twitter Acquires Hotspots.io and adds Mobile Targeting

    Twitter has acquired Hotspots.io, a company dedicated to helping entities get better ROI using social media. The team at Hotspot will join Twitter’s revenue team and help with analytics aimed at publishing and advertising efforts.

    Hotspot io commented on their website:

    “We’re incredibly excited to announce that Twitter has acquired the Hotspots.io team!”

    “Starting today, we’ll be joining up with Twitter’s revenue engineering team where our focus will be on developing analytics tools for Twitter’s advertising and publishing partners.”

    “We founded Hotspots.io with the vision of helping companies and individuals maximize their social media ROI through actionable and accessible analytics, and we’re thrilled to be able to continue that work on a much larger scale at Twitter.”

    It’s been a couple months since Twitter announced promoted mobile tweets on iOS and Android, but now advertisers and brands can benefit from the addition of BlackBerry and special platform targeted ads. Here’s what Twitter had to say on their advertising blog:

    “Now brands can refine their reach by targeting users with platform-specific messages across Twitter.com, iOS, Android, BlackBerry and other mobile devices. Meanwhile, BlackBerry users may start to see Promoted Tweets with deals, discounts, news and information from brands even on the go.”

    “Promoted Tweets on BlackBerry will be displayed at or near the top of the timelines of a brand’s followers and users with interests similar to the brand’s followers. Promoted Tweets will appear in a BlackBerry user’s timeline only once and can be dismissed, mirroring the experience on Twitter.com.”

    “Promoted Tweets on BlackBerry and the ability to target campaigns to specific devices and platforms will help brands more easily connect to Twitter users —anywhere, anytime.”

    No doubt the addition of analytics specialists, Hotspots io, and the new platform targeting brings a lot of extra value to Twitter advertisers and Promoted Tweets. I think we’ll be seeing a lot more introductions of this variety on Twitter’s advertising platform as they scramble to expand capability in the US and abroad during the coming months.

    Right now, Twitter is biggest in the US, Japan, and Brazil, but they have plans to expand well into 2014. We’ll keep you posted as Twitter continues to refine and bring value to their new advertising platform.