With money in the bank, Twitter in no rush for IPO

With Facebook's IPO looming just ahead, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo says his company is in no hurry to follow Facebook's lead.

Costolo, speaking at Wired'sDisruptive by Design conference in New York on Tuesday, said the online company is doing well and has plenty of money in its coffers -- meaning there's no reason for an initial public offering (IPO) at this point.

"We don't see any need or urgency to even think about that stuff," Costolo reportedly said "We don't need to worry about financing now."

According to CBSnews.com, Costolo said Twitter expects to bring in $250 million a year in revenues in 2012.

Twitter turned just six years old near the end of March. In that short time, the microblogging site has accrued more than 140 million active users and they're posting more than 340 million tweets a day. That's more than 1 billion tweets every three days.

Despite its success, it's no big surprise that Twitter isn't as eager as some other social networking companies, like Facebook and Groupon, to take their business public.

In early March 2011, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said the company was making money and he had no immediate plans to take it public. Like Costolo this week, Stone said at the time that Twitter was bringing in enough money on its own.

"We have so many other things before we even think about that," Stone said then. "We are not even discussing it internally. It's too far off."

By contrast, Facebook is moving ahead with its upcoming IPO, which the financial industry -- along with the computer industry -- has been waiting for with baited breath Facebook is largely considered a bellwether for the entire social networking world. If its IPO goes well and raises the company an extraordinary amount of money, that should fuel excitement and financial support for other social companies.

Sharon Gaudin covers the Internet and Web 2.0, emerging technologies, and desktop and laptop chips for Computerworld. Follow Sharon on Twitter at @sgaudin, on Google+ or subscribe to Sharon's RSS feed. Her email address is sgaudin@computerworld.com.

See more by Sharon Gaudin on Computerworld.com.

Read more about web 2.0 and web apps in Computerworld's Web 2.0 and Web Apps Topic Center.

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