The long-awaited flotation of Twitter is on the cards after the social networking site said it had submitted formal documents.
Twitter tweeted that it had “submitted an S-1 to the SEC (US Securities and Exchange Commission) for a planned IPO (initial public offering)”.
It followed up the tweet with a picture of the Twitter offices and a message reading: “Now, back to work.”
Weâ??ve confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO. This Tweet does not constitute an offer of any securities for sale.
— Twitter (@twitter) September 12, 2013
The S-1 form is a document used by public companies to register their securities with the SEC.
The move follows Facebook floating on the US stock market in May 2012 for $104bn. Though shares initially slumped, they have since improved.
Twitter is expected to be valued at up to $10bn. It’s the second biggest tech IPO since Facebook. Even Google went for $1.7bn when it went public in 2004.
Twitter makes revenune from advertising through sponsored tweets and sponsored search results. The company has made a special IPO filing available only to companies whose revenue is under £1 bn, which means its current revenue must be below that.
The secret filing means that Twitter’s accounts cannot be analysed until the SEC has approved their request. This week Twitter acquired a mobile advertising startup, MoPub, suggesting it intends to push further into the advertisting space.
The company has been under fire recently following abuse directed at women on the website, leading to an apology from UK boss Tony Wang.
#twitterfacts
The first tweet was sent on March 21 2006 by Twitter creator Jack Dorsey.
500 million tweets are sent every day.
The most re-tweeted tweet to date was Barack Obama's message "four more years" in 2012. It was retweeted more than 811,000 times.
Pop star Justin Bieber has the most followers at 44.5 million, while singer Adele is the Briton with the most followers, at 17.5 million.
Twitter employs 3,500 people, half of whom are engineers.