JANA Partners has stepped up and revealed a new stake in Twitter (NYSE:TWTR) per their SEC Form 13-F. The activist has a 0.4% stake in TWTR. Will the fund step up and formerly take on TWTR as an activist target?
But fixing TWTR is not all that simple.
TWTR tried to sell itself and failed horribly. Its user base growth is stalling and advertisers still can’t figure out if spending on the platform is worthwhile. Now, they’re working on cleaning up the trolls from the platform, which means an activist could show up and push TWTR to give a buyout another go.
More importantly, the real activist push should be new management. In particular, getting Jack Dorsey to give up his dual CEO role, ideally stepping down all together. And then we get a new board to better formalize the strategy for getting advertisers to spend on the platform. Dorsey has failed at making TWTR an appetizing acquisition target. The buyout is the best bet, given the ever rise in social media companies (like Facebook (NASDAQ:FB) and Snapchat (Private:CHAT)) trying to get a larger slice of the online advertising pie. A pie that Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) (NASDAQ:GOOGL) already owns.
Cleaning house, finally.
TWTR is taking steps to clean up the bullying and abuse happening on its platform. The inability of TWTR to manage the “trolls” was one of the big reasons that buyers walked away from TWTR. Both Disney (NYSE:DIS) and Salesforce (NYSE:CRM) – interested acquirers of TWTR – reportedly walked away given the number of trolls on the TWTR platform.
