UPDATED October 3, 2013, 5:36 p.m.
Twitter filed the official paperwork for its IPO.
According to Twitter, its monthly active user base increased 44% as of the end of June year-over-year to 218.3 million. Revenue also grew at a record pace. The IPO filing states a 198% revenue increase to $316.9 million, much of which is attributable to the social network’s advertising services offerings. In the filing, Twitter says it lost nearly $80 million last year and nearly $70 million during Q1 and Q2 of 2013. Advertising is responsible for a staggering 97% of Twitter’s revenue in 2012 versus 85% the year before.
September 12, 2013
Twitter let slip its plan to go public with a tweet on its official website today.
The announcement affirmed speculation that it was about to make the leap after recent acquisitions that extended its reach into the digital marketing sphere. Specifically, these acquisitions better positioned the social network as an ad exchange.
“Marketers will have to brace for substantial change to the Twitter platform,” commented Steve Minichini, president of interactive marketing at the agency TargetCast tcm. “Twitter has launched a few interesting ad products that are useful without significantly impacting the Twitter community.”
Aaron Everson, COO and president of enterprise social marketing platform provider Shoutlet, foresees similar change. “We’ve spent a lot of time taking a look at [Twitter’s] social advertising capabilities,” he says, pointing to the growing success of Facebook’s ad exchange. “I think we can expect [Twitter’s ad platform] to broaden its functionality.”
However, Minichini adds a word of caution. Twitter’s rush to improve its ad platform could ultimately end up overburdening it: “The fear for marketers…would be the degradation of the Twitter platform with one new ad product after another,” he said.
In its announcement, Twitter wrote:
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.
— Twitter (@twitter) September 12, 2013
An S-1 filing allows SEC regulators to review and suggest changes to an IPO before filing.
