Twitter valued at $8bn-$10bn as Facebook and Google close in

Executives from Facebook and Google have had preliminary meetings with Twitter in the past few months to discuss an acquisition of the popular micro-blogging site, according to a report in The Wall Street Journal.

The report cites people familiar with the matter as saying that the talks have gone nowhere so far, but that figures of $8bn to $10bn (£5bn to £6.25bn) have been mentioned.

Unsurprisingly, Google and Facebook have no comment to make.

The potential $10bn valuation for Twitter would be on the high side for a company which made just $45m (£28m) in revenue in 2010 and was valued at $3.7bn (£2.3bn) in December, according to the report.

However, investors have been flocking to the site. Around $200m (£124m) in new venture capital was pumped into Twitter in December, and venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz announced yesterday that it had invested $80m (£50m).

This is not the first time that Facebook and Google have discussed buying Twitter. Reports in 2009 suggested that Google was close to making a bid in excess of £250m, for example.

The sources quoted by The Wall Street Journal said that all three companies have kept their lines of communication open, paving the way for a potential deal in the future.

It remains to be seen whether Twitter's founders accept a deal, or decide go it alone like Groupon which recently rejected a $6bn (£3.7bn) offer from Google.

Ray Valdes, an analyst with Gartner, argued that the high valuation of Twitter is indicative of the strong competition betwen Facebook and Google and the "bubble-like atmosphere" around that area of the tech world.

"There is a race between major players on the web, primarily Facebook and Google, to control the future, a future which is increasingly social," he added.

"Google needs a major boost to its strategic initiatives around the social Web, because its past efforts have fallen short. Facebook is currently at the top of the heap in terms of the social web, but needs to acquire Twitter, if only keep this valuable property out of Google's hands."