A lot of people expressed surprise at the $315 million purchase of Huffington Post by AOL. But that’s nothing compared to the figures Facebook and Google are reportedly considering ponying up to acquire Twitter.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the two web powerhouses are among the potential suitors for Twitter and the numbers being bandied about are in the $8-10 billion range.

From the WSJ:

This for a company that, people familiar with the matter said, had 2010 revenue of $45 million–but lost money as it spent on hiring and data centers–and estimates its revenue this year at between $100 million and $110 million.

In December, Twitter was valued at around $3.7 billion. The service has around 200 million registered users and recently began selling advertising in the form of Promoted Tweets, Promoted Trends and Promoted Accounts, all of which the Journal says are “doing brisk business.”

“The company is having great ad-sales momentum right now,” one analyst tells the paper. “but we still think they need to do something big to increase usage and get more people seeing and interacting with tweets… Most of their advertisers are just experimenting at this point; the challenge will be to get those advertisers to come back and buy more.”

Do you see Twitter as a service that will be around long enough to grow into a company worth the $8-10 billion price tag?

Twitter as Tech Bubble Barometer [WSJ]

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