Twitter announced on—where else?—that it has filed papers for an initial public offering.
[tweet https://twitter.com/twitter/status/378261932148416512]
The decision to file has been the source of speculation since Facebook, Twitter’s larger social media counterpart, went public in May 2012. The company has an estimated value of $10 billion and more than 200 million active users.
Under a federal law passed last year, companies with less than $1 billion in annual revenue (Twitter will bring in about $500 million in 2013) can submit confidential S-1 statements to the Securities and Exchange Commsision without subjecting them to public scrutiny. If the company decides to pull out, it hasn’t divulged its internal numbers to the public, according to Forbes.
But the form must be made public 21 days before the company begins the potentially long process of reaching out to investors and analysts to win support for its public offering.