Twitter IPO: What we learned about the micro-blogging firm from its filing

 

Twitter's Initial Public Offering (IPO) is just weeks away, and the firm wants $1bn to expand its business. It's an exciting time for watchers of social media, and it will also mark the end of any sort of privacy given to Twitter and its business practices. There is now nowhere to hide.
We've ploughed through the 200-plus page filing to discover the most interesting tidbits of information and see what it tells us about Twitter as a firm, and its future plans.

#Tweetoverload
Twitter users pump out an astonishing 500 million tweets per day, adding to a pile of 140-character musings which now stands at a cool 300 billion.
Users refreshed their timelines in excess of 287.2 billion times in the first six months of 2013, a 79 percent increase when compared to the same period in 2012. In the second quarter of 2013, Twitter's 218 million monthly active users refreshed their timelines 691 times each, and this does not include some mobile apps and its TweetDeck platform.

#Talent
An IPO generally signifies growth which can no longer be handled simply by private equity investors. Twitter now employs 2,000 people in offices in 15 cities around the world. It's taken on 1,800 employees since January 2010 and if it achieves the $1bn IPO it's looking for we can expect Twitter to expand a lot further.
In its SEC filing, Twitter acknowledged that while it plans to hire more people for its engineering, product management and design teams, it faces intense competition to get people with the right skills into those roles. The firm concluded that it "may not be able to hire new employees quickly enough to meet our needs". It should be noted here that Twitter is obliged to write about worst-case scenarios in its filing but it is nonetheless interesting that the competition for talent, even for a company with as strong a brand as Twitter, is so fierce.

#UsersTwitter's user numbers are very interesting. With 218 million monthly active users and 100 million daily active users, this pales in comparison to Facebook. Of the 218 million, 75 percent access the service using a mobile phone or tablet.
It's a very strong set of numbers for the company, and because only a third of Twitter's users are US residents, it means there is a lot of potential for growth at home as well as abroad, which will be a boon for western advertisers and investors alike.
 

#Downfalls 

 #Cashflow

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