Twitter co-founder Evan Williams confirmed the microblogging service closed a funding round from Insight Venture Partners, T. Rowe Price, Institutional Venture Partners, Spark Capital and Benchmark Capital. Twitter, which has already received $55 million in funding from Benchmark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners, has become intensely popular in 2009. More than 54 million users use per month, according to comScore.
Twitter co-founder Evan Williams Sept. 25 confirmed the
microblogging service closed a funding round from Insight Venture Partners, T.
Rowe Price, Institutional Venture Partners, Spark Capital and Benchmark
Capital.
Twitter lets users post messages of up to 140 characters
to its Website. Numerous media reports
said the funding totaled $100 million, valuing the startup at $1 billion despite the absence of any solid revenue.
Williams declined to provide financial details in a this
blog post on the news, but wrote
on the company blog:
Resource Library:
"It was important to us that we find investment
partners who share our vision for building a company of enduring value. Twitter's
journey has just begun and we are committed to building the best product,
technology and company possible. I'm proud of the team we've built so far and
I'm confident in the future we'll build together."
Twitter, which has already received $55 million in
funding from Benchmark Capital and Institutional Venture Partners, has become
intensely popular in 2009. More than 54 million users use per month, according
to comScore.
While Twitter's acquisition talks with Facebook and
Google earlier this year failed to bear fruit, the new funding proves is Twitter intends to stay and independent.
The company has been boosting its value proposition for
businesses, publishing its Twitter 101 manifesto to instruct businesses how to use it. Twitter also
revised its terms of service to allow for advertising in the future.
While Dell, JetBlue, PepsiCo and others have already used
Twitter to boost sales, the company is expected to set up and charge for services
to allow businesses to market and promote themselves on the service. Twitter
would also charge for analytical insight into those services.
The company also said it will soon
offer geolocation services to Twitter, enabling users to include their latitude
and longitude to any tweet.
Twitter's funding comes shortly after
rival Facebook
trumpeted that more than 300 million users use its social network.
Twitter has said internally it hopes to be the first Web service to reach 1 billion users. The company could also
buy one or more of the myriad startups that have emerged in the company's
shadow to extend the value of the microblogging services on desktops and mobile
phones.
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