Salesforce reportedly considers Twitter acquisition

Salesforce is considering making a bid for Twitter, the Wall Street Journal reports.

The CRM company is reportedly in the early stages of exploring the deal, while other companies such as Google are also reportedly eyeing a Twitter acquisition.

It may seem like a strange move for Salesforce on the surface, but Twitter's fire hose of information could enhance Salesforce's Einstein efforts. Twitter's ability to gauge public sentiment, become a breaking news venue and broadcast information easily could make it the eyes and ears for an artificial intelligence system or an analytics suite. And with Einstein, Salesforce is aiming to infuse artificial intelligence everywhere through its clouds.

As the Journal noted, Salesforce already has a partnership with Twitter, started in 2012, feeding social media data into Salesforce's analytics systems. Still, nothing beats first-party data, as illustrated by Microsoft's $26.2 billion purchase of LinkedIn and IBM's acquisition of The Weather Company's B2B business.

More on Twitter:

• Why Twitter could be attractive to an enterprise tech vendor
• Twitter Q2 misses on revenue, shares plunge
• Twitter partners with Cheddar to stream business day market analysis show