Twitter share price soars after hoax news story on a fake “Bloomberg” site fools investors
Twitter's share price was sent soaring over eight per cent today as investors fell for a hoax news story claiming the social media network was considering a $31bn takeover.
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The report was posted on bloomberg.market this morning; a site appearing to impersonate business publication Bloomberg.com with an anonymous owner.
As the report was shared on the internet, stock in Twitter briefly shot up to $38.56 per share before returning to a more modest three per cent rise once the story was said to be false.
Nevertheless, the stock was the second-most actively traded on the New York Stock Exchange, with over 44m shares traded in consolidated volume by late afternoon – smashing the 50 day average of 19.9m.
Both Bloomberg and Twitter have said the story was a fake, but the identity of the culprit remains a mystery.
According to the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), Bloomberg.market was only registered four days ago to the Panama P.O Box of WhoisGuard, a company which provides its own information on a website for a client to hide their actual identity.
WhoisGuard has previously battled with groups such as the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording Industry Association of America over its protection of the identity of torrent site owners.