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Twitter sets listing plan in motion with surprise tweet

Goldman Sachs will be the lead underwriter for the most highly anticipated initial public offering of a social media firm since Facebook

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Twitter is expected to increase advertising revenue 63 per cent to US$950 million in 2014 from US$583 million this year. Photo: Reuters

Twitter, the microblogging service with more than 200 million members worldwide, has filed to go public, moving closer to the most anticipated offering since Facebook.

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Goldman Sachs will be the lead underwriter for the initial public offering, according to people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified because the information was not public.

Twitter disclosed on Thursday it had filed to go public in one of its 140-character messages, known as a "tweets", but did not say when it might complete its market debut, or how much it planned to raise.

A public listing marks a watershed moment in Twitter's journey from its 2006 beginnings as a way for web users to publish short messages, to a megaphone for hundreds of millions of members worldwide to join conversations on global affairs, sports and entertainment.

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Chief executive Dick Costolo will need to convince investors that the offering will fare better than internet IPOs from Facebook, Groupon, and Zynga, which all lost more than half their value within six months of their listings.

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