Twitter tweets it’ll go public

NEW YORK — Twitter is going public. The short messaging service aptly tweeted yesterday (Sept 12) it has filed confidential documents for an initial public offering of stock.

But the documents are sealed, as Twitter is taking advantage of federal legislation passed last year that allows companies with less than US$1 billion (S$1.3 billion) in revenue in its last fiscal year to avoid submitting public IPO documents.

San Francisco-based Twitter posted on its official Twitter account yesterday afternoon that it has “confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO”.

The confidentiality will likely help Twitter avoid the public hoopla that surrounded the initial public offerings of other high-profile social networking companies, including Facebook, which went public in May last year.

Twitter’s IPO has been long expected. The company has been ramping up its advertising products and working to boost ad revenue in preparation.

Most of Twitter’s revenue comes from advertising. Research firm eMarketer estimates that Twitter will make US$582.8 million in worldwide ad revenue this year, up from US$288.3 million last year. By comparison, Facebook had ad revenue of US$1.6 billion in the April-June quarter of this year. By 2015, Twitter’s annual ad revenue is expected to hit US$1.33 billion. AP