What Twitter’s IPO Has Told Us

twitter

With plans well underway for Twitter’s IPO, the first of many information caches have been realised by the seven-year old social media giants. And it makes for some seriously interesting reading.

Firstly, Twitter loses money.

And not the way you might lose a few pennies down the back of the sofa. More the way you would lose money if you filled a black bag with your life savings and threw it from a fairly high building. Twitter reported losses of $80 million last year – that’s enough cash to buy Cristiano Ronaldo…if the mood took them.

It is interesting to note that when Facebook filed its S-1 in the first step towards the 2012 IPO, it was in a notably different position. Larger user base, profitable and growing rapidly, Facebook were yet to harness the true potential of mobile advertising revenue – something they are now making up for.

Secondly, Twitter is scared of spam.

The annoying: “Russian women in your area want to meet you” kind, not the tinned meat.

spamTwitter estimate that 5% of the accounts on their platform are spam accounts or fake users, something which could have a detrimental impact on the company’s growth in the years ahead. The valuation of the company could be rocked if users become inundated with irrelevant tweets, as well as screwing up any analytics conducted.

Thirdly, a lot of people have Twitter.

An understatement, perhaps. A LOT of people have Twitter. Every month, around 220 million of you tweet. To give you an idea of what that means – it’s 3,400 times the population of Guernsey. Incredible, I’m sure you agree.

There are 1.65 billion timeline checks a day – the equivalent of every person on the Isle of Wight checking their stream 11,702 times a day! Madness.

Finally, and one that puts a smile on my face – I earn more than the Chief Executive of Twitter, Dick Costolo.

I’ll repeat that for those of you I have stunned (but too lazy to move your eyes up a line) – I earn more than the Chief Executive of Twitter… Now, it isn’t that my start-up supplying bouncy castles to corporate training events has taken off (although it is only a matter of time). Costolo took an enormous pay cut a few months ago, slashing his salary to $14,000. Having said which, he did receive $8.4 million in stock awards and a further $2.9 million in options. And I did not.

We can’t wait to see what the next filing tells us!

If you would like to learn more about Shoreditch Office Space and how we can help with your next property search, please contact sean@shoreditchofficespace.com