Fair play to Twitter say the search marketing team at clickmate. The social media giant has just revealed plans to raise $1 billion with a listing on one of the main New York stock exchanges, most probably Nasdaq.
This is the biggest social media floatation since the debacle of the Facebook IPO and advisers, and investors, will want a better performance.
Twitter has filed documents with the US regulators which paves the way for an IPO in the coming months. The company has said it plans to raise some £619 million ($1 billion).
Twitter is just seven years old and the IPO will make its founders and early investors a fortune.
Although it has over 200 million users sending over 500 million tweets a day, the company has yet to turn a profit. The filed papers showed that in the first six months of this year, it made a $469 million loss on revenues of $254 million.
Wall Street analysts said that the stock offering will likely get a good reception with plenty of buyers trying to buy parcels of shares. One analyst told the BBC: “Social media is red hot…Twitter is front and centre benefiting from market enthusiasm for all things social, and remarkably strong metrics.”
Another said: “It looks like Twitter is looking at how to enrich the experience and it understands that to build a successful service, they have to create something people like and want to come back to and spend time on.”
Like many hi-tech flotations, investors are not buying current profits, but the promise of huge profits down the road. The company will have to be trusted that it can convert a massive user base into profitable revenues, something that Facebook and others have struggled with.
Twitter makes money from ads, especially on mobile devices. These ads can be tracked, which gives agencies a particular valuable source of metrics.
Future investors will be hoping that Twitter can fully exploit its user base and crank up the profits.