Twitter Announces IPO Plans w/ Tweet

Twitter has filed its S-1 documents for a highly-anticipated initial public offering with the SEC. Twitter of course announced the news of its planned IPO with a tweet.

“We’ve confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO,” reads their initial tweet. “This Tweet does not constitute an offer of any securities for sale.”

A minute later, Twitter was back to business. “Now, back to work,” they wrote in their follow-up.

Twitter, created in 2006, has become a major form of communication for people around the world and is growing in popularity. Twitter only recently started to generate serious revenue by showing ads in the stream of tweets that users see. Twitter will haul in $583 million in advertising revenue in 2013 and is expected to hit $1 billion in 2014, according to eMarketer. The Jobs Act, signed into law in April 2012, permits companies with less than $1 billion in annual revenue to file a confidential S-1. This is highly likely the reason that Twitter wants to go public now as they can do it confidentially without having to show the company’s financials and user base until they are required to.

Early estimates of Twitter’s valuation range from $10 to $20 billion. Could this help start a rash of tech IPOs?