Twitter closes 'significant' new funding
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Xinhua, August 2, 2011
Micro-blogging service Twitter on Monday announced that it has received a "significant" new round of funding, confirming weeks of speculations.
"Now we have an opportunity to expand Twitter's reach with a significant round of funding led by the venture firm DST Global, with the participation of several of our existing investors," Twitter said in a blog post.
However, it didn't disclose the amount it raised or how much the investors valued the company.
In July, technology news site All Things Digital and other U.S. media reported that Twitter was in the process of closing a funding deal totaling 800 million U.S. dollars, which would value the company at 8 billion dollars.
According to the reports, half of the funding, or about 400 million dollars, will be used to cash out current Twitter investors as well as employees.
While announcing the new funding, Twitter also provided updates on its growth, saying the site is now generating over 200 million Tweets per day, compared with 65 million Tweets per day a year ago.
"One year ago, there were approximately 150,000 registered Twitter apps. Now, there are more than one million that connect to Twitter. And our team has grown from 250 people to more than 600 in the past 12 months," Twitter said.
Meanwhile, the micro-blogging service is still struggling to get the business growing in terms of revenue and profits.
It now has an annual revenue of about 200 million dollars, still small in comparison to other Web 2.0 start-ups, according to the report by All Things Digital.
