It is no secret that Twitter is one of the largest and most popular social media networks in the world. From politicians to actors to businesses and everyone in between, it seems that the world gets most of its news and information from Twitter. It is also a great place to share your thoughts and connect with those who feel the same way.
Twitter has been in the news a lot recently when it was announced that Tesla CEO Elon Musk wanted to buy them. That deal has fallen through, and now Musk and Twitter are engaged in a legal battle. But this isn’t the first time a major company has thought about purchasing Twitter. In 2015, The Walt Disney Company considered purchasing the social media giant.
According to former Walt Disney CEO Bob Iger, ultimately the company decided to pass on the acquisition because such a purchase “would’ve been irresponsible.”. Iger addressed the near purchase at Vox Media’s Code Conference in Los Angeles.
“We’re in the business of manufacturing fun at Disney, of doing nothing but good, even though there are others today that criticize Disney for the opposite, which is wrong. And this was just something that we were not ready to take on and I was not ready to take on as the CEO of a company. And I thought it would have been irresponsible.”
Iger continued to explain that, at the time, Disney was looking for a way to deliver all of its IP, and Twitter seemed like a great way to do that.
“Frankly, it would have been a phenomenal solution, distribution wise, then after we sold the whole concept of the Disney board and the Twitter board, and we’re really ready to execute the negotiation that was just about done. Interestingly enough, I went home, contemplated for a weekend, and thought I’m not looking at this as carefully as I need to look at it. Yes, it’s a great solution from a distribution perspective. But it would come with so many other challenges and complexities that as a manager of a great global brand I was not prepared to take on. Major distraction, and having to manage circumstances that weren’t even close to anything that we had faced before.”
One of the major points of contention between Musk and Twitter is that Musk claims Twitter executives were deceptive in the number of users on the platform who are not real. Iger made the comment that Disney also recognized that a large number of users were bots, which was one big reason Disney decided against the purchase.