Ben Harrington of M&A finance blog, Betaville, has a few
followers on Twitter. So he used Twitter this afternoon to put out
what he calls, a "RARE Alert."
He claims to have knowledge of an impending acqusition of
Twitter by the Walt Disney (DIS) Company. Disney
was reportedly interested in Twitter but backed away earlier this
month, according to other reports. Harrington puts out this
disclosure about his report:
"To be clear, this story is
RARE! For readers unfamiliar with the RARE concept
I will define it below.
Market gossip that hasn't
been tested through formal journalistic channels (public relations
executives, bankers etc). The rumour might be total codswallop but
then again there may be something in it, so it's worth airing on
Betaville."
Is the self-proclaimed "freelance journalist" giving himself
room to spread an unsubstantiated rumor? Twitter stock jumped 5% in
the after hours market with millions of dollars changing hands. A
search of "RARE Alerts" on Betaville brought up other examples of
these so-called "RARE Alerts" from Betaville. At least one of his
stories seemed to have come true, inspiring this comment from
Harrington in September 2015:
"Some of my competitors and market
watchers like to claim I make these RARE stories up. But anyone who
follows my work and knows me well understands that I'm extremely
diligent about sourcing, so it's good to see a RARE story confirmed
and prove my detractors wrong!"
Other RARE stories, such as a Microsoft acquisition of
Blackberry in 2015, did not seem to bear fruit.
