Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) has held preliminary talks about a potential combination with TikTok (BDNCE), The Wall Street Journal reports. That would mean combining with TikTok's U.S. operations, under threat of an American ban due to saber-rattling from President Trump. But Twitter would be a long shot vs. much-bigger TikTok suitor Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT), which is further along in talks and would have an easier time funding a deal that could run into tens of billions of dollars. (Nobody's quite sure what the value of TikTok's U.S. operations are.) Interestingly, an acquisition of TikTok would be something of a reversal for Twitter, which shuttered its own short-video service Vine in 2016 (to loud audience complaint).

Source: Wall Street Journal August 09, 2020 00:00 UTC