Twitter is going public.
The news comes following a tweet that the company made saying that it has just submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO (Initial Public Offering).
They tweeted:
“We’ve confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO. This Tweet does not constitute an offer of any securities for sale.”
News that Twitter is going public represents the second high-profile stock market debut for a tech giant since Facebook began selling shares last year.
Twitter was launched in 2006 and has since become one of the most used forms of communicating online. Celebreities, politicians, and your every day Joe go about tweeting messages all the time. Currently, the microblogging service has over 200 million members around the world.
Recently the company has managed to generate significant income by showing ads in the stream of tweets a user sees.
According to eMarketer, Twitter is expected to generate over $583 million in advertising revenue for 2013, and more than a billion next year. This represents a huge increase from $139.5 million in ad revenue generated in 2011.
Kevin Hartz, CEO of start-up Eventbrite, said that this is “one of those exciting moments in the Valley,” and even though it is only a financing move for Twitter “it demonstrates the next step in the life of what is an emerging Internet giant.”
Tim Cunningham, a fund manager at Thornburg Investment Management Inc., which manages around $91 billion, told Bloomberg:
“We’ve been waiting for the IPO, but until we get the details, we don’t know how attractive it is. We know revenues are less than $1 billion, which is the only incremental data point we get.”
Gartner analyst Brian Blau, added: “It makes sense that they are doing an IPO with those numbers. It’s a great time for them to raise money.”