In Any takers for Twitter at $8 billion! The question has already been answered in the affirmative. While its peers are busy filing for IPO to raise funds, Twitter is using the private equity route with rather lucrative results. According to sources the micro-blogging site is in the process of raising $400 million in a deal that values it at $8 billion.
The investment is going to be led by the DST Global, a firm controlled by the Russian billionaire, Yuri Milner. The venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, who is already a big stakeholder in the company, are also said to be participating in the new round of financing.
Whatever may be the amount that Twitter is finally able to raise, it represents a big jump from the $200 it managed to raised in December last year, then the company was valued at $3.7 billion. Within the span of few months, Twitters valuations have more than doubled. Even in the fast moving social networking space, this is really good performance.
According to business analysts, the company makes about $200 billion in sales through online advertising. So a valuation of $8 billion turns out to be roughly 40 times its sales. On face of it, the valuation seems hard to justify, but the investors are obviously looking at the potential for future growth that surely exists out here.
Founded in 2006, the company has more than 200 million users currently. The recent study by the Pew Research Center said 13 per cent of online US adults use Twitter, and that is up by almost eight percent from November 2010.
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