A fake news report purportedly from Bloomberg about a possible USD 31 billion takeover of Twitter spurred a five percent surge in the social network's shares today before it was denied.
The report appeared on a 'Bloomberg.Market' web page virtually identical to the powerful financial news agency's real pages at 'Bloomberg.Com', and with links to other real Bloomberg reports.
The fake report said Twitter "is working closely with bankers after receiving an offer to be bought out for USD 31 billion," citing, as news agencies frequently do in such reports, "people with knowledge of the situation."
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The report came out at about 11:35 am and sent Twitter's shares jumping from USD 36.90 to USD 38.82 in minutes. Fifteen minutes later, though, the shares fell back to near where they started.
"The story was fake and appeared on a bogus website that was not affiliated with Bloomberg," said Bloomberg spokesman Ty Trippet.
The agency itself reported that the website domain had been registered several days ago by someone in Panama.
Shares in Twitter were still up 3.3 per cent over yesterday's close in early afternoon trade at USD 36.96.
The shares though are sharply down from the year's peak of just over USD 53 in April, with investors showing concern over the company's ability to build income on its hugely popular micro-messaging platform.
