Silicon Alley Insider reports that Twitter is looking to raise a Series C round.
They’re hearing that the company wants $15M at a $60M valuation, probably from former investors Union Square Ventures and Charles River Ventures, and perhaps from Spark Capital as well.
Twitter raised over $5M in funding last July. Digital Garage also invested in the company this past January as part of Twitter’s expansion into Japan (the only market where Twitter is actually making money).
The news of this Series C comes on the heels of a couple significant departures.
Twitter should really start to monetize all of their properties. They need sponsored Twitter accounts that all users can opt-in and opt-out of following. These accounts would be viewable from a searchable directory, and would push products, news and other advertising out across the network in the form of Tweets.
I signed up for an account to see what all the HYPE was about and its so weak!
More Twitter on TwitCrunch…zzzz…
I don’t understand why twitter don’t just charge a very small amount/month for the service? It’s incredibly popular amongst certain parts of the population – why wouldn’t they pay for it?
(you wouldn’t expect AT&T to give phones and the network for free, would you?)
I shall answer my own question by guessing that this is all fear-driven. If they charge and lose 90% of their users, they’ll be making money, but look alot less attractive to a buyer.
What a nutty world Web2.0 is!
A red petrol can? Not seen one of those since they banned 4-star!
Twitter please allow us to break our followers up into groups! Add tabs to click on for each group, where one tab shows your business followers tweets, another shows your friends’ tweets, etc…
I think the Twitter bubble is gonna burst soon. But that is just me.
Andrew, because who the hell is going to pay for that?
Twitter is a great example of how “making something people want” is not enough. Business model, anyone? Even if I stipulate that there is value (for some people, not me) to the service, I’ve yet to see anyone suggest a working monetization scheme for the company. Ads aren’t going to do it, and I don’t see a critical mass of people paying. Maybe they can partner up with mobile providers so they can hide a small service fee amongst the myriad other charges. Or maybe they’re just praying that they can improve the infrastructure and get acquired.
But hey, I’m probably an idiot; I don’t see how Facebook is going to monetize either.
i am sure verizon will purchase them in due time.
Nice pic…
If TechCrunch will continue writing 10 posts everyday about Twitter, Twitter may find a big inverstor. TechCrunch, We want news other than Twitter also. Its popular now, Job done.
I think Twitter, Seesmic & Dancejam should merge.
Michael A is in luv with this glorified, yet stripped down IM system. Until he moves on, we’ll continue to be flooded with Twitter posts.
Twitter is a waste of time. Who has the time to update constantly? Who really cares if you are watching TV, walking the dog, etc… if my friends want to find out what I am doing they call. That’s a thought!
By the way I have just farted… now I am leaving the room…
Wow, so I came here ready to rant about all this lame Twitter news and discovered everyone else is already sick of it too! Isnt there anything else?
$15M at $60 val is low in my opinion. Twitter management does not know the true value of twitter if they take it. I saw a tweet earlier in the week from bjians at Spark saying he had to make a big decision. I wonder if he was referring to twitter. Spark is already into Tumblr which hasn’t made much of a mark. Twitter is a new phenomenon, a new kind of killer app and they own the space.
I likenconcrete biz plans, but i would value twitted at 2 slides and 500 ning”s
Does anyone know what the founders dilution is down to? They did 5.4m on a 20m round, now a 15m on 60m – did they have an angel round? They have a plan for sure – however what will the founders get on exit?
I know the talk is about how useless Twitter is – I can’t comment on that – they are growing a substantial user base and if they raised 20m with 300,000 users they must have pegged each registered user at $66 per user valuation.
I think if they can take it to the next level and continue with their growth they can be a great play. What is their revenue model? Well if I was a betting man it is a million tech savvy – ultra connected – super social – early adopters – that is some pretty targeted eyeballs.
Cheers – Eric
Today I signed up with twitter just to get on the bandwagon. With so many social networking sites around, I wonder what features would be needed to make it to the top and make some revenue.
I honestly don’t see that much use in twitter for the general public…sure its used by a lot of startup founders/bloggers to keep people notified…but thats a very limited market. They are probably hoping for a buyout by something like LinkedIn
Every week the same Twitter discussion. Fact was, is and probably will be (due to the cost of short messages): This is a nice feature, maybe a platform, it’s not a business.
To be honest: It’s quite the opposite of a business. It’s burning money big time, and anybody who knows the mobile telco business knows, that this will not change.
But there are 100.000s of users you say. Right. That’s because they’re giving away commodities (short messages) for free. Not that hard to understand.
All you Twitter lovers, please take out some paper and a pen and try to calculate the costs of Twitter. And their income. At best, Twitter is a gamble (that some telco will buy it). I think it’s a bubble. Twitter will never be a money maker if it’s not part of a telco.
PS: Don’t get me wrong. I like Twitter as a function. But I also recognize a money burner, if I see it.
@22 Carsten
“Every week the same Twitter discussion. Fact was, is and probably will be (due to the cost of short messages): This is a nice feature, maybe a platform, it’s not a business.”
Plus, why would consumers join a social network of self-important posters when Facebook offers the same features and hasn’t had the downtime issues that Twitter faces?
Man, I’m going to be so happy when this bubble bursts and all these guys hopping from one useless startup to the next get shitcanned when the scam becomes clear.
Enjoy eating at soup kitchens, bitches.
Twitter creates a lot of value for everyone else in the ecosystem (see Matt’s comment in the original Silicon Alley post). At some point one of these other players will buy the company, or Twitter can start charging some of them. Of course once something is no longer free it may not be so attractive. How long would YouTube last if it wasn’t free?
Again, why does it need more fuel? They should just be putting up ads to the users like Gmail’s…