Jack Dorsey has been back as Twitter’s C.E.O. for about a year, and while some things have changed under his leadership—the company is now making a big push into video—others have not. The company’s most recent earnings report at the end of July fell short of expectations, with Twitter posting a $107 million net loss on $602 million in sales. It also pointed to near-stagnant user growth, a problem that’s plagued the company for years. If Dorsey can’t work some magic with Twitter, if this push into live video doesn’t work and there’s nothing to show for it, what can be done? “There is no plan B,” Twitter executives have said, but that’s not quite true: the company could still sell.

In fact, plenty of investors are hoping it will. Twitter’s stock jumped on Wednesday, and again Thursday morning, amid speculation that the social-media company could be a takeover target, prompted by a candid remark from Twitter co-founder Ev Williams. “We’re in a strong position now,” Williams told Bloomberg in an interview when asked about the future of the company as an independent entity. “And as a board member we have to consider the right options.” This sent investors into a frenzy, and not for the first time: last month, rumors swirled that former Microsoft C.E.O. Steve Ballmer and Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal al-Saud were making a takeover bid for the company. The rumor was dismissed, but not before Twitter’s stock shot up nine percent.

Twitter has struggled to entice new users and sell ads on its platform, even after the heralded return of co-founder Jack Dorsey as C.E.O. For the better part of the past year, critics have said an acquisition could be one way for Twitter to solve its problems. But it remains unclear who would want to buy the 10-year-old business. Google’s Larry Page doesn’t seem very interested, and while Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg has tried twice to buy Twitter, he probably wouldn’t want to get into a bidding war for it now, especially now that he’s taking on live news and video on his own platform, which has an audience an order of magnitude larger than Twitter’s.

Still, just as Verizon recently bought up Yahoo, plenty of legacy media companies could be interested in acquiring the young-ish digital-media platform. And investors, who have watched Twitter’s stock trend inexorably downward in the three years since its I.P.O., are cheering the prospect. As boilerplate as Williams’s message was—of course a company’s board is obligated to consider every option, including entertaining the notion of preliminary takeover bids—Twitter’s stock leapt 5.8 percent on Wednesday as a result, and another 3 percent or so at the opening bell on Thursday.

  tech News, Technology News