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| Follow us:Twitter are hoping followers turn into dollars. |
US$400 million to be precise, catapulting Twitter’s worth to a stratospheric $8 billion. This valuation places the micro blogging network in the same billion dollar league, or thereabouts, as fellow social networker, Facebook, valued at $50bn.
Announcing the “significant” funding boost from venture capitalists DST Global, who are described by reports as ‘serial’ social media investors.
DST, led by a Russian billionaire, Yuri Milner, also has shares in e-deals site groupon (Stardeals here in Oz) Facebook, and gaming giant Zynga.
The micro blogging site also revealed its “record pace” growth in the past year, its own blog post chirped yesterday.
“Just a year ago, we delivered 65 million Tweets a day. Today, we generate over 200 million Tweets per day.”
It also now boasts more than one million Twitter connected mobile apps – a massive jump compared to just 150,000 a year ago.
And team Twitter has more than doubled its headcount from 250 to more than 600.
Describing the investment as “an opportunity to expand Twitter’s reach with a significant round of funding led by the venture firm the microblogger plans “to aggressively innovate” and “international expansion.”
And how? Promoted Tweets and changing the way they appear, for starters.
Just recently it announced it was hooking up with new corporate partners including Dell, Microsoft Xbox, Best Western, Dell,, Groupon, HBO, LivingSocial, as well as the likes of Red Bull, Starbucks and TNT.
“Today, we’re introducing a way to ensure that the most important Tweets from the organizations you follow reach you directly, by placing them at or near the top of your timeline” it announced on July 28.
“Twitter is the only place in the world that has a real-time pulse on what people are thinking and doing practically anywhere.”
“We can’t wait for you to see what we have planned to make Twitter even better.”
As long as we can still follow Kelly Osborne’s rage fuelled rants, we don’t care.
