Twitter’s Initial Public Offering (IPO) filing was made public Thursday, as the social media company looks to go public. Twitter representatives also shared that they would like to raise $1 billion from a share sale.

Twitter has been growing rapidly recently, revenue in 2012 was up 198% to $316.9m. There has also been a large increase in the amount of users as the number increased from 151.4m last year to 218.3m this year. Twitter’s IPO is the most anticipated technology IPO since that of Facebook in 2012 which proved to be a disaster.

However, it isn’t all good news for the seven year old social media company as Twitter advertisers stated that Twitter needs to increase its user base. Though 218.3m users may seem like a tremendous amount, Facebook has more than five times the user base. Advertising made up 85% of Twitter’s total revenue and a failure to increase its user base could be a gigantic problem for the company.

Advertisers still prefer Facebook for advertising opposed to Twitter largely due to its larger user base. However, there are other reasons why I Facebook is preferred, one being that Twitter has yet to become a daily habit for users. Twitter usage spikes up when a major event takes place and this inconsistency is a problem for advertisers. If Twitter wants to take the next step up and challenge Facebook it must find a way to increase its user base.

Article Links:

http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2013/oct/03/twitter-ipo-share-sale

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303492504579115753167390832.html

Twitter S-1 Filing:

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1418091/000119312513390321/d564001ds1.htm