Germany a day before the terror attacks that killed 133 people. German prosecutors alleged the man knew what the weapons were used for. He denies that claim. The Un Security Council has adopted a Nuclear Test Ban resolution. Nearly three dozen gop senators earlier wrote to president obama expect expressing concern that he go to the u. N. Day,l news, 24 hours a howard by journalists and analysts in more than 120 countries. I amn a melendez, Nina Melendez. This is bloomberg. Bloomberg west is next. Emily im emily chang and this is bloomberg west. Its official, twitter is exploring a sale. Why salesforce and alphabet might be interested in whether the Ceo Jack Dorsey really wants to sell. Facebook admits it has been inflating video metrics for advertisers. We will discuss the impact of this error and what facebook is doing to fix it. , the company suffers the biggest hack attack of all time, the timeline of what the company knew and when coming into question. But first, it is official, twitter is exploring a sale. The struggling social network is working with Goldman Sachs on a possible deal. Sources say salesforce is interested. Other reports suggest google is considering a deal. But talks at this stage are still informal. That did not stop investors from sending twitter shares surging up more than 21 in friday trading. Twitter has made up almost all of its 2016 decline in a single day. Joining us are Bloomberg News reporters, and my guest host for the hour. Sarah, you been working this story all day. In fact you have been working this story for weeks, its been a big existential question out there. Tell us the latest today. After the many months of rumors you and i have heard, this is the first time we have heard from sources definitively that Goldman Sachs is working with twitter to deal with incoming interests and have some these informal conversations the could turn into something more formal. Emily salesforce versus alphabet, what do you see twitter getting out of one versus the other and what do they get out of twitter . Its quite different in the case of the two Different Companies. Obviously in many ways google , could be said to be the company that most could benefit from twitter if they were capable of using it properly once they owned it. But they need a social system, another way of connecting with people, interacting with people as bots and other systems that they dont have a play in become more important. I think thats why the announced the aloe messaging service this week. Twitter could help them there. Its very expensive. In the case of salesforce, its a from left field idea that an Enterprise Technology company that has been trying to move into being the de facto leader in cloudbased Enterprise Software would want to own what is more or less a consumer service. But i think from the standpoint of marc benioff, anything that really draws more attention to the company and helps underscore their ambition to be a multiservice provider to a lot of different kinds of companies, including marketers, could be a plus, and i think it would put salesforce on the map in the common parlance in a way they never have been before and that might be worth a lot of money for salesforce. Emily they certainly did not shy away from the bidding, benioff told that too is a couple weeks ago. He wanted you to do the deal but you cant win them all. Salesforces chief digital evangelist tweeted this morning, why twitter . One, personal learning network. Two, the best realtime content. Rich news. Four, great place to promote others. I think somebody internally got excited. Maybe he doesnt know direct details about a bid or anything like that. In fact we havent heard there is a solid bid from anyone right now. I think salesforce is always sort of promoted social selling using twitter. There is a blog post in 2014 were they said, make relationships with people on twitter that you want to sell to. Make it part of your strategy. And so, maybe the salesforce employee got excited by their reports and said, why make sense for them . Emily lets talk about whats happening in twitter. I spoke to ed williams, cofounder of twitter, who is on the board, who had this to say to me when i asked him about whether he wants to sell the company a couple weeks ago. Take a listen. High in jack. I fully support jack. Emily you can only go so far. But weve seen a lot of m a. Do you see twitter remaining an independent company . No comments on that. We are in a strong position right now, i think. And as a board member, we have to consider the right options. Emily interesting that no comet no comment became a comment that drove the stock up 6 the next day, at the same time you have jack dorsey, whos also cofounder of twitter, ceo of twitter right now, he canceled an appearance at a conference this week with advertising executive Martin Sorrell. Sorrell did interview dorsey by Video Conference and asked the same question. Take a listen to what dorsey had to say. Theres always been a lot of interest and passion around what we do for the past 10 years. Weve always had a lot of speculation around what twitter an where twitter would go. But we have a really strong plan ahead of us, and something that we are focused on executing. Emily sarah, is there a disagreement within the twitter board room about what to do here, and if jack sources doesnt really want to sell the company, could he hold up the process . When it comes to the twitter board room theres been a history of disagreement. This is a board that jack has recently added members to that that hes handpicked. But yeah, i think dorsey has historically wanted to give it a go, being independent. I think ed williams has historically been more open to a sale. The two cofounders still dont quite agree on everything. Emily david, at the same time, you have a company that while it is beloved by so many people, user growth and Revenue Growth are struggling. Why is that of value to any of these companies we are talking about . David i think it is a legitimate question, an 18 billion ballpark valuation that would be required at a minimum to buy it. Its often said twitter is more of a phenomenon than a business success, and it is a company with an extraordinary social presence. I mean a cultural presence almost second to none. Its almost really at the level of facebook in some ways in terms of its presence in the dialogue of society. As a business it is nowhere near in the ballpark of facebook, and thats a real dichotomy that i think would face any buyer. As one of the reasons may be salesforce might have some interest in it. I dont know whether google would. To justify this kind of money, you probably have to buy it for reasons other than any prospective profit that you could get from it in the near term. Really that is not what twitter offers anybody in a foreseeable near term that i can see. Emily i want to pick through a couple other candidates that were thrown out there. Google and salesforce are not the only ones. And sara, i know it is harder for you to comment on this as a journalist. So david, throw it out to you. Quick answers here. Facebook. Yes or no . David to buy twitter . emily would they be interested . David no. Emily apple . David they would possibly be interested. I dont think they would know what to do with it. Emily how about news corp. . David it would be the kiss of death for twitter. Emily rich greenfield of bt ag has suggested has high potential for buying twitter. Jack dorsey i believe is still on the board of disney. David i think a Media Company would be a problematic owner for twitter but its conceivable. Emily thoughts on all of the above . Sara i think david is right about the Media Company being an issue, especially as twitter has been doing these streaming deals, a gets more complicated when you bring in a Media Company that already has a set of deals for what they do. But, you mention facebook, there would be some antitrust considerations there that we would have to take a look at. Apple, i dont think weve heard them be interested in social media but you never know. I think when it comes to an asset like twitter, a lot of companies are going to take a look at it just to understand the opportunity. There have been rumors about a sale for such a long time that many boards of Large Technology companies have already discussed it. Their teams have already taken a look at the idea of buying twitter, if they havent made a bid quite yet. I think the salesforce interest, now that its been reported, may spark more looking under the hood and at least pinging twitter and seeing if something can happen there. Emily david, you get the last word on verizon. Which of course already agreed to pay a 4. 8 billion for yahoo . David i think it would be less problematic for verizon than for news corp. Or disney. And it does make sense given the kinds of things theyve been buying. But boy, would they have a lot on their plate if they tried to add twitter to aol and yahoo , which is a big problem right at this moment. I think they would be a live i ill advised to do it. They might want to do it though. Speculate,s fun to but as far as we know, salesforce and alphabet the only the game, at least reportedly as we know it. Sarah frier, our Bloomberg News reporter. You are both sticking with me. Next, facebooks market momentum was fueled by impressive video. What happens when the metrics werent as good as we thought . Later this hour we will focus on the state of seed Stage Funding. This is bloomberg. Bloomberg television was brought to you by the trade. Dont just see opportunity, sees it. Emily on friday the social network admitted to giving marketers and inflated number for the average time being spent viewing online clips. Facebook said it has taken steps to fix the problem and advertisers werent overcharged. Joining us is our Bloomberg News reporter, sarah frier, who covers facebook. New york this week for adweek. Our guest host for the hour David Kirkpatrick with us via skype from portland, maine. And a media analyst at the marketer. Paul, thank you for joining us. Sarah, tell us what facebook did wrong here and how significant the error is. Sarah facebook was miscalculating for advertisers. The average time spent viewing a video. Facebook only counted the video view if somebody looks at a video for more than three seconds. When they calculated the average video view time they only divided it by the people who had watched already for three seconds or more. So they werent counting the people who watched it for two seconds or one second or not at all, which inflated the video view time they are reporting back to advertisers and may have impacted some Business Decisions on how much more to spend on facebook video ads. Emily the ceo of a Big Ad Agency said earlier today, weve been calling for a long time for media owners like facebook and google not to mark their own homework and release data to enable independent valuation. The referee and the player cannot be the same person. So facebook is responsible for telling advertisers and analysts and investors the kind of metrics they are seeing. Theres no real police officer. What do you make of sir Martin Sorrells comments . Paul weve heard this before. ad buyers have long lobbied for more transparency and thirdparty standards. And if you look at the history of advertising with traditional advertising, you have the nielsen ratings for tv, arbitron for radio, the audit bureau of circulation for print. We dont have anything in the digital realm that compares, and that goes for both ad supported platforms like facebook and twitter and google, and its also true of the more transactional video platforms like apple and amazon and netflix. So i think this is going to revise those calls that have been going on for a while for those thirdparty standards. Emily how big an impact do you think this will have on facebook . If this was a company that generally has been performing well, the narrative has been going well, a lot of that has been based on video. Is this a big deal . Is it something that will incur big reputational damage . Or just a blip . David i think this is just a blip but the point that the often sage Martin Sorrell made is a good one that actually has a much bigger implication. This idea that the referee and player cant be the same person is something that essentially afflicts everything the facebook does and is even related to the complaints weve seen recently about how it decides what to censor in the newsfeed, etc. It is a very untransparent system, and i think the company is likely to receive more and more pressure to explain to the world how it does decide what happens inside its vastly influential ecosystem, but nobody, including Martin Sorrell, really has the good idea about how to put a referee in there in a way that would be practical. Maybe, score can help on the video adds a little bit. Advertisers are going to stay in facebook for all kinds of other very Good Business reasons. But facebook does have a longterm issue with transparency about how it works that will not go away. Emily would you agree with that . How do you expect advertisers to react to this . Paul i do agree that there is a need for more transparency, and the more influence that facebook and twitter and other Digital Media companies have, the more that need increases. But i also think its a very big challenge. These are now video companies. That wasnt true even a year, two years ago. That adds a whole layer of complexity when you are just dealing with a printbased phenomenon, that is one thing. So now you have video, now you have live media as well. Emily looks like we are having trouble with paul. Sarah, talk to us about the response from facebook, where they go from here. I assume you will be talking to advertisers all next week. What are you looking to hear . Sarah facebook right away once it was reported, it was not wisely reported by them that they messed this up but once the journal uncovered it, they had an executive come out and say, weve looked at all our metrics, were fixing this. There have been no issues with billing. We are so sorry. It was an apology, mea culpa, were going to rely on thirdparty people to measure us. But i think advertisers are now questioning a little bit the validity of some of facebooks claims about its success, and that can hurt facebook down the line. I havent heard of any people pulling dollars from facebook video ads. In fact a lot of people still feel that they are very successful and influential. But it is certainly not a good sign for them as they rely so much on video. Zuckerberg thinks that video will be most of what facebook is in a few years. Emily sarah frier, who covers facebook and twitter. We will be looking to you for all the updates next week. From adweek. Paul verna of emarketer, and David Kirkpatrick. David, you are staying with me. On todays funding board, whole foods boosted its stake in the grocery delivery service. Bloomberg has led insta car authorized a sale of new equity earlier this year and let hold sues by new shares in an expanded partnership. Whole foods first teamed up with the company in 2014. This new investment was based on the same shareprice valuing its to at 2 billion. Earlier this month the ceo said his company would be cash flow positive in the next 12 months coming up, apple stepping up plans for a smart home service, smartphone device to rival amazons echo. We will hear more about the project next. This is bloomberg. Emily shares of apple slid on friday amid speculation from unverified twitter accounts that the German Research firm gfk said iphone 7 sales would be lower than sales of the 6s last year. Its report based on data from europe and asia and does not cover sales in the u. S. Gfk said its numbers are confidentially given and should not be released to the public without confirming the veracity of the numbers. Bloomberg has not verified, but it would contrast earlier positive indications from u. S. Wireless carriers who said earlier this month that sales were better than expected. Syria andth apple, alexei could soon be going head to head in the smart home stakes. Apple is said to be testing prototypes of an collective ice based on its existing voice assisted siri. The device is designed to control appliances, light locks, and curtains. Like its rival. As iphone, apple ipad and apple watch sales start to slow down, apple is looking for new areas to generate you forms of new forms of revenue. The company has recently taken a project to compete with amazons echo and alexei device that will allow people to use an apple design speaker as a home kit hub for their home straight this would allow people to show commands, add an apple design speaker, such as turn on the lights, turn off the lights, or open the garage doors, as well as issue commands through siri for playing music, controlling your stereo, controlling volume for the stereo, watching videos, mapping information as well. So apple also looking to improve siri on iphones and ipads. The company is working on a new initiated internally called the invisible hand program which seeks to allow people to continuously talk to their iphones, ipads and macs nonstop without ever touching the phone to conduct your commands. Emily mark garman there. I want to continue the discussion with our guest host for the hour, David Kirkpatrick, who i know is a big fan of amazons echo. Part of the beauty of echo is it is tied into your amazon account. We have one in the kitchen. When i need groceries, i tell echo to put those in the shopping cart. We dont know if an apple device would have the same capabilities or integration with amazon, given the competition here. But what is your take on this . David i think its inevitable that apple is going to build a product that is comparable to the echo alexa product, just as google has announced that they will do. Its so important of a category, and amazon has so proven that there is a customer demand and its a sexy new kind of interfac