According to a report from CNBC, Twitter wants to sell. CNBC's sources say that Twitter's board of directors is "largely desirous of a deal," and the company has "received expressions of interest" from tech and media companies. The most notable buyers on the shortlist? Salesforce.com and Google.

Twitter has had trouble growing its user base, and in turn, its advertising revenue. Twitter's monthly active user count of 320 million puts it in the same neighborhood as Google+ (300 million) and far from Facebook's offerings of Instagram (400 million) and Facebook (1.59 billion).

News of a possible sale has sent Twitter stock up over 20 percent.

Salesforce's chief digital evangelist, Vala Afshar, explained the company's reasoning for wanting to buy Twitter on—where else?—Twitter:

Why @twitter? 1 personal learning network

2 the best realtime, context rich news

3 democratize intelligence

4 great place to promote others — Vala Afshar (@ValaAfshar) September 23, 2016

Saleforce.com was involved in the bidding for LinkedIn, too. While the company was ultimately purchased by Microsoft, Salesforce's CEO says the company was willing to spend more if further negotiations continued.

For Google, snagging Twitter would give it a much higher-profile social network than the struggling Google+ and would also give it access to a vast trove of Twitter search and advertising data. Twitter has had trouble growing its advertising revenue, and the Internet's biggest advertising company has no small amount of expertise in that area. Twitter's new owner would also get Vine and Periscope, which could probably be fed into YouTube somehow.

Don't expect news of a sale too quickly—CNBC notes that "no sale is imminent." Formal bidding could begin shortly, though, with the possibility of a deal happening before the end of the year.