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Technology / Internet

Twitter not going public

by Moyo Roy
08 Mar 2011 at 08:20hrs | Views
TWITTER has no plan to go public in the near future and does not need additional funds because it is making money, the co-founder of the popular microblogging site said yesterday .

Biz Stone also dismissed reports that JPMorgan Chase was in talks to buy 10% of Twitter for 450m, which would have valued the company at 4,5bn. "We have so many other things before we even think about that," Mr Stone said when asked about the prospects of an initial public offering, in Seoul yesterday .

"We are not even discussing it internally. It's too far off," he said, adding that Twitter had no plans to raise funds over the next 12 months. The company, created in 2006, employs about 350 people.

Valuations for social networking companies have soared, with Facebook's recent 1,5bn round of financing led by Goldman Sachs giving the firm a projected value of 50bn.

Asked about a Financial Times report last week that said a technology fund from JPMorgan was in talks to buy 10% of Twitter, Mr Stone said: "(The report is) made up."

Twitter, which allows users to send 140-character text messages to groups of followers, is one of the web's most popular networking services along with Facebook and LinkedIn and had 175-million users as of September.

Social networking services are a growing challenge to web players such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo, which are competing for users and advertising dollars .

Source - Reuters