By Sona Kim

1355 Market Street
Suite 900
San Francisco, CA 94103

Executives:

 

Company Profile

Twitter is a micro blogging and social networking platform where users can read and send tweets limited to 140 characters. It is currently the tenth most popular website worldwide and boasted 232 million users in this quarter alone. Over 500 million Tweets are sent everyday and 76% of active users are on mobile. [6] Looking at a US demographic, 16% of US adults use Twitter and one in ten adults get their news from Twitter. [7]

History

Twitter was initially part of a podcasting firm called Odeo and became its own company in 2007. The company expanded its user base immensely during the 2007 SXSW Conference after successfully placing two plasma screens that streamed Twitter messages. [8] In 2010, Twitter announced that they would offer paid advertising, or “promoted tweets” which has become a major revenue stream for the company.

Financial Snapshot

According to newly filed financial documents, Twitter has a net loss $133.8 million this year compared to a $70.7 million loss in 2012. However, their advertising profits are quickly rising as the company collected $168.6 million in third quarter, for a total of $422 million in total revenue. [9] Twitter’s research and development costs are also growing immensely as the company believes these investments will turn into profit. R&D costs have increased a whopping 153% from last year alone.

Advertisements accounted for 85% of revenue in 2012 and this has increased to 89% in 2013. Another form of revenue for the company is data licensing, which allows clients to access user tweets and data. Twitter has made $47.3 million from selling user data in 2013, which is a 36.3% increase from last year. [10]

Nielsen TV Ratings

In October 2013, Nielsen and Twitter announced a metrics system to gauge which television shows are popular. Initial research showed that for every 1,000 tweets, 50,000 people would see those tweets. There has also been a marked increase of live conversations about television on Twitter. Last quarter alone, 19 million people wrote over 260 million Tweets about live TV, which marked a 38% increase. According to an executive at Universal, “the potential value of Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings is that is provides a pathway for an advertiser to turn audience energy into brand momentum”. [11]

Vine

Vine is a video sharing mobile platform acquired by Twitter in 2012. The company launched the application in the first quarter of this year and Vine quickly became the top video sharing application. It is the fastest growing app in 2013 with a 403% growth rate. [12]

More notably, Dunkin Donuts aired the first Vine as a TV commercial in September during a preseason NFL game. This marks the first wave of integrative social media and television and will surely be a growth sector for Vine as other brands have begun to launch Vine campaigns, such as Nissan. [13]

Twitter and the News

One of the reasons for Twitter’s success is their ability to facilitate real time information, especially with breaking news. As a result, Twitter recently rolled out push notifications in November 2013 for breaking news. However, a random group of Twitter users received a push notification when they neither followed the @BreakingNews account or signed up for push notifications. [14]

Twitter has also expanded an account specifically for breaking news called @EventParrot, which is a new service that allows for personalized notifications. This is a very recent feature but it shows that Twitter is recognizing their strength as an immediate news outlet.

Spammers and Hackers

As an online platform, Twitter faces problems from spammers and hackers. The company estimates that over 11 million accounts are spam accounts. They announced in their initial filing that they were aware that a rise in users will also result in more spam accounts and that they will continue to terminate spam accounts as they find them. This year alone, there have been several prolific incidents of cyber hacking. Earlier this year, the company announced that over a quarter of a million users’ information may have been compromised. In another disturbing incident, the Syrian Electronic Army briefly gained control of one of Twitter’s domains. [15]

Competitors

Twitter’s major competitors include other technology giants such as Facebook and LinkedIn. While Twitter may have millions of other users, Facebook has over times more. Twitter gains almost $3 in revenue per user but this pales in comparison to LinkedIn’s $8. However, the market value of each Twitter user is $134.47. [16]

IPO – $TWTR

The major story for Twitter this quarter is their initial public offering. Goldman Sachs was announced as the lead underwriter on the deal and the company raised $1.8 billion from the IPO. As a result of the 70 million shares that Twitter issued, the company’s market value grew to a little over $13 billion. Twitter stock opened at $26 and rose rapidly on its first trading day and has settled to a low $40 range currently. [17] Twitter’s IPO marks the second largest Internet IPO after Facebook. The company opted to file its IPO on the NYSE, as NASDAQ is heavier with technology companies and is trading under the ticker name TWTR. Currently, analysts anticipate that Twitter will become profitable by 2015 as advertising revenue streams increase. [18] There has been some worry that Twitter is not profitable as it has posted net losses for the past three years. However, investors believe that Twitter has opted to go public earlier in its growth curve and has more opportunity to become profitable in the coming years.

Twitter’s Future

As Twitter begins its first foray as a public company, there are many doubts that Twitter is just a fad and that their IPO will be overhyped and overvalued just like Facebook’s. However, based on growth expectations and expansions into news, Nielsen ratings and popular applications such as Vine, Twitter will surely be profitable by 2015. As social media becomes more measurable, Twitter stands to bring in higher revenue streams as advertisers begin to recognize the power of this social media platform.

Sources:

1. Twitter Logo Picture – http://mybroadband.co.za/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=17977&d=1347540360

2-5. Executive Profiles and Pictures – https://about.twitter.com/company/leadership

6. Twitter User Stats – https://about.twitter.com/company

7. Twitter News User Stats – http://www.journalism.org/2013/11/04/twitter-news-consumers-young-mobile-and-educated/

8. Twitter History – http://jobsearchtech.about.com/od/companyprofiles/p/Twitter-Company-Profile.htm

9. Twitter Financial Costs – http://money.cnn.com/2013/11/06/technology/social/twitter-ipo-price/

10. Twitter Spending Costs – http://techcrunch.com/2013/10/15/twitter-doubles-its-q3-revenue-but-its-aggregate-2013-loss-has-widened-to-133-8m/

11. Nielsen and Twitter Ratings – http://www.nielsen.com/us/en/press-room/2013/nielsen-launches-nielsen-twitter-tv-ratings.html

12.  Vine Growth – http://www.b2bmarketing.net/news/archive/mobile-new-vine-named-fasting-growing-app-2013

13. Dunkin Vine Campaign – http://www.adweek.com/news/advertising-branding/dunkin-donuts-launching-first-tv-ad-made-entirely-vine-152267

14. Twitter Push Notifications – http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/twitter-tests-waters-breaking-news-push-notifications/

15. Twitter Hacks – http://www.marketwatch.com/story/10-things-twitter-wont-tell-you-2013-10-25?pagenumber=8

16. Twitter Competitors – http://www.trefis.com/stock/twtr/articles/215695/how-does-twitter-stack-up-against-facebook-and-linkedin/2013-11-18?from=filmstrip%3Atop

17. Twitter IPO Factsheet – http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/interesting-numbers-twitters-ipo-20824494

18. Twitter IPO Info – http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-11-06/twitter-raises-1-82-billion-pricing-ipo-above-offering-range.html

19. Twitter News Demographics- http://www.journalism.org/2013/11/04/twitter-news-consumers-young-mobile-and-educated/

20. Sponsored Ad Image – http://www.rebelcmc.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/4573997468_222cebf8ff.jpg

21. Twitter Social TV Image- http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/files/2012/12/twitter-social-tv.png

22. Vine Popularity Image – http://www.b2bmarketing.net/news/archive/mobile-new-vine-named-fasting-growing-app-2013

23. Breaking News Push Notification Push – http://www.digitaltrends.com/social-media/twitter-tests-waters-breaking-news-push-notifications/

24. Competitor Revenue per Customer Graph – http://www.trefis.com/stock/twtr/articles/215695/how-does-twitter-stack-up-against-facebook-and-linkedin/2013-11-18?from=filmstrip%3Atop

25. Top Internet IPO Image – http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/MWimages/MW-BO775_top_ip_MG_20131107095949.jpg

26. Twitter Expected Revenue Graph – http://www.trefis.com/stock/izea/articles/215754/twitters-long-hard-path-to-profitability/2013-11-19?from=artPopin