The Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, the Arab world's richest man and News Corporation's second largest shareholder after Rupert Murdoch, has taken a $300m (£193m) stake in Twitter.
Alwaleed, a nephew of Saudi Arabia's king estimated by Forbes to have a net worth of about $20bn, has secured a stake estimated at about 3.75% in the micro-blogging site after "months of negotiations".
The timing of his investment has raised eyebrows given the key role Twitter has played as a tool for Arab activists across the Middle East to organise protests and voice their opposition to oppressive regimes. Several Arabs tweeted that they were worried Alwaleed's purchase could influence Twitter's strategy negatively
While Arabic accounts for just 1.2% of all public tweets, the volume of messages has grown by a factor of 22 over the year due in large part to the Arab Spring uprisings, according to French research firm Semiocast.
The micro-blogging site has more than 100 million active users.
Alwaleed has made the acquisition in conjunction with Kingdom Holding Company, his investment vehicle, which has an array of ventures. Earlier this year, the company announced a £736m deal to build the world's tallest tower in the Red Sea city of Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.
Read more: Guardian
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