Facebook. Google. Apple.

Names already linked with the purchase of Twitter. Microsoft has probably been mooted at some point too.

But the question is – who would be better off buying it?

Who will buy Twitter?

Twitter is a wonderful thing but it is not a business. It is currently unprofitable and I have yet to hear a good enough method of turning that around. Advertising is, of course, the most obvious and would suggest that the best suitor to Twitter is advertising king

Perhaps the question is, then, who needs Twitter more, not who can do more for Twitter.

Google grasps the free and open landscape of the internet, to which Twitter is an integral part. Google’s many fingers are everywhere and it seems unlikely that owning Twitter would enhance their position much. But when did that ever stop them? They bought Blogger and haven’t changed it much. It just rolls on the same as it ever did. It’s done nothing for Google itself though, really.

The same cannot be said for Facebook, Apple or even Microsoft.

Facebook has adopted a Twitter-esque interface in its latest design but I find it hard to understand how they would benefit from Twitter, technically or commercially. Facebook can’t even make itself profitable. Integration could only really mean replacing their current status update model with the Twitter feed. Unless you have any ideas?

Which leaves Apple and Microsoft. Apple is traditionally a hardware company. One of the best. Its online forays, however, have been disappointing at best and completely ignored at worst. Could Twitter, then, give it not so much a new lease of life online as signal its official entrance?

Apple can certainly afford it. Twitter turned down a $500 million cash and share offer from Facebook based on the fact they couldn’t decide how much Facebook stock was worth. A cash-only offer from Apple is a very real possibility, however. And likely to be significantly more than the original $500m offer too.

The iPhone has many Twitter apps, such as Tweetie, which are a nice litte earner for Apple. But the company doesn’t need to OWN Twitter to benefit from it in that sense. This article explains the benefits to Apple better than I could (and credit for sparking this off in my head must go to the author too!).

So finally – Microsoft. To my mind, Microsoft have been strangely silent on the social media front outside of their own endeavours. And their own endeavours, such as Windows Live, have been met with a mixed reaction. While I use Live Messenger, I do not like anything else to do with it. And even Live Messenger is a bloated piece of software, even if it is almost Google-esque in its useability.

The idea that Microsoft would branch out into the wider, freer world is almost unthinkable. It wouldn’t be the first time the company has surprised us though and if they did emerge as a possible suitor to Twitter I wouldn’t be surprised.

Though I may be horrified…

But which one of these would make Twitter profitable? And how? Outside of Google and its advertising model, I’m at a loss.

I’d love to hear your ideas.