While the world worked itself into a frenzy over Facebook's IPO earlier this month, the other social media giant Twitter has said it will postpone plans to go public for years because it is not ready to disclose its earnings to the market, according to reports.

In an email obtained by CNN, Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo told staff last year that the firm will not be taking the same path as Facebook in making an initial public offering (IPO) anytime soon.

"We don't want to be public until we have very predictable quarterly earnings growth," Costolo wrote in his August email, according to CNN.

"We're not ready to be a public company for a couple years."

For the last year, Twitter shareholders have been banned from selling more than 20 per cent of their shares.

The reason for this is that if companies have more than 500 shareholders owning one class of equity shares the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) mandates the business to disclose financial results.

Twitter told V3 it could not comment on the email.

The firm has been discussing possibilities of an IPO route to revenue growth since 2009.

In related news French president Nicholas Sarkozy has joined Twitter. The president has not always shown a liking for emerging technologies and the social web, particularly when the new technologies come into conflict with traditional media establishments.

It remains to be seen if he proves as sensational as some of the other recent converts to the micro-blogging service, most notably Rupert Murdoch who has already hit out at Google on the service.

One of the most interesting things about Facebook filing its $5bn initial public offering (IPO) is that it finally provides some hard evidence into the company's success and operating strategies, having for so long been a private company with closed books.

Mostly notably, the firm is already making some strong returns on its advertising model, with revenues up to $3.7bn for 2011, an increase of $1.7bn from 2010, showing the company's advertising-led model is paying off.

However, it is not just advertising that is driving this income, with the firm revealing in the filing that Zynga was responsible for 12 per cent of this income, as Facebook takes a cut of any purchases made by users in the games that run on the site.

Away from the financial figures, the filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), also highlights some of the ways in which the company is setting itself up to deal with having to appease Joe Public once they get their greasy mitts on shares in the firm.

The most interesting of the caveats Facebook has placed within its IPO relates Mark Zuckerberg's right to appoint the company's successor in the event of his death.

"In the event that Mr. Zuckerberg controls our company at the time of his death, control may be transferred to a person or entity that he designates as his successor," the filing notes.

However, Zuckerberg clearly has no intention of handing control over any time soon as he's made sure that the share structure of the company works in his favour.

Each share of the 28.4 per cent stake he controls in the firm has a 10 times greater power than normal shares on any issues shareholders vote on, ensuring he retains overall control of the firm.

"[This] provides Zuckerberg with the ability to control the outcome of matters requiring stockholder approval, even if he owns significantly less than a majority of the shares, [...] including the election of directors and significant corporate transactions, such as a merger or other sale of our company or its assets," it reads.

Zuckerberg has also committed to only draw a salary of $1 a year from 1 January, 2013, similar to Steve Jobs during his time at Apple. He probably expects to eek out a living via bonus schemes and share grants.

The firm will also likely be forced to start providing regular updates on the number of active users on the site, which has now been revealed as 845 million, so it may even be the case it can tout one billion members in the run up the firm going public in May.

No doubt that will send already rabid investors into a full-blown frenzy. All this from its inception in a dorm room in Harvard. Amazing.

ORLANDO: With IBM beating the drum on the use of social tools and collaborative software, its chief information officer Jeanette Horan, outlined the firm's own work in these areas, to show it practices what it preaches.

With almost half a million full-time employees (currently around 450,000) IBM has a huge workforce using a vast array of tools, both internally and externally and the figures she revealed are truly astounding:

•    On average 360,000 staff use the firm’s instant messaging platform every day.
•    This generates a staggering 50 million instant messages per day.
•    There are 198,000 members of staff on Facebook.
•    A much smaller 20,000 are on Twitter.
•    LinkedIn Is the most popular platform, though, with 281,000 users.
•    20,000 members of staff run their own internal blog on the firm’s Connections tool.

She also revealed its willingness to shake things up by explaining it runs a reverse-mentoring system in the company where some of the youngest new staff members teach its most senior executives how to use the latest social tools.

However, one area the firm admitted it is still addressing is the growing issue of what should happen to employees' Twitter accounts after they leave the company.
 
Carol Sormilic, vice president global workforce and web processes, explained to V3 that it is an area the firm is currently debating internally, but has yet to reach an answer.

One area where the firm is up and running, though, is letting staff bring their own devices to work after the end of a two-year pilot that involved feedback from 20,000 members of staff, which actually equates to just five per cent of its workforce.

This led to the creation of a set of policies that include an enforced eight-digit password for each device to access the corporate network and Horan revealed that she herself uses her own personal BlackBerry phone as her work device.

On the issue of cloud computing, Horan explained that IBM operates six datacentres to help it run a private cloud computing network as the size of the firm makes this a viable return on investment.

“We have the scale to be able to see the benefits of managing the cloud behind the firewall,” she added.

As well as a fascinating insight into the day-to-day IT demands of a firm the size of IBM, its willingness to embrace new trends and give staff the power to take advantage of new tools may give IT leaders in other, smaller, firms the courage to go forward with their own plans in these areas.

Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt argued at the Le Web conference on Wednesday that Silicon Valley needs to have more competitors on the world stage.

Schmidt said he considered a number of European cities to be eligible rivals for the California tech hub. Schmidt named Paris specifically, although this may well have have been because Le Web is taking place in the French capital.

"Today's entrepreneurs tend to break out young, they are risk taking, they are less family oriented, and these kinds of people prefer cities," said Schmidt.

"Also the diversity that cities offer tends to produce stronger organisations."

Schmidt said the role of governments in creating the next Silicon Valley should be to ensure all citizens have access to fixed and wireless broadband. "Then the government should let the citizens do everything else," he said.

Schmidt also told entrepreneurs attending the event that he thinks his country's authorities are "idiots" for having such strict visa regulations that deprives the US of innovative ideas.

"You can't move to the US because we are idiots and we won't give you a visa," said Schmidt.

Facebook's European managing director, Joanna Shields, agreed with Schmidt that the 'next Silicon Valley' will be in a city.

"City clusters are really where innovation is starting to happen. Europe, Paris, London, Berlin are really going to give Silicon Valley a run for its money," she said.

All of which is great news for London's Tech City, which David Cameron and the coalition government have really being pushing as a centre for technology entrepreneurs.

With investment from Google, Yammer, Huddle and a host of other technology firms, the area has already tripled in size to feature over 600 companies now in just its first full year.

However, there have been concerns from some that the area is running low on office space, with Old Street and Shoreditch particularly swamped, while areas to the north and east, towards Stratford and the Olympic Park, remain relatively untouched.

Ever since the riots that swept the UK in August there's been much debate and hand-wringing over what should be done with social media sites during times of unrest, with the government even threatening to shut down sites like Twitter.

Thankfully, Thersea May and co. seem to have come to their senses and said they will not be seeking additional powers to block sites. There was a timely reminder that these services can benefit law enforcement agencies on Thursday when it was revealed that over 600 police officers are now on Twitter.

Speaking at a Westminster Forum event, Paul Reilly, a lecturer in media and communications at the University of Leicester, noted that since the riots the number of police officers on Twitter had grown to 632.

"Every territorial force now has a Twitter feed as part of steps being taken to use this tool to engage and provide accurate information and stop rumours circulating," he added.

"Police in Northern Ireland have been particularly proactive in the use of social media and received praise for this and other forces are using these tools more effectively now but there has been a degree of caution among some too."

He added that this number had grown significantly since the riots as more officers out on the streets look for ways to engage with their community.

Furthermore, not only does Twitter offer engagement but it also offers a wealth of information that police forces can access, as Justin Crump, the chief executive of security intelligence consultancy firm Sibylline, explained.

"Social media is open source intelligence on steroids. It moves at a hell of a pace and can be very biased and you have to be very disciplined to deal with it but if you integrate people, processes and technology you can gain benefits," he said.

Indeed, V3 spoke with South Yorkshire Police in October who are using Twitter to increase engagement with the community and track potential disturbances, as police across the land prove that shutting down social media sites would be a disastrous decision.

Twitter is now an established corporate social media tool, and many companies have policies on its use and encourage staff to exploit it as a way to interact with customers, create brand loyalty and drive traffic to their sites.

However, it's still a medium that can cause problems, as that bastion of wire-breaking news, Associated Press (AP), discovered this week when two of its journalists covering the removal of Occupy protestors in New York were arrested.

Staff at the firm immediately posted this breaking update about the arrests on Twitter. But they were subsequently reprimanded for not putting it on the wire first, thereby undermining the value of AP's service and making Twitter the first source of the story.

However, Reuters' social media editor, Anthony de Rosa, questioned AP's warnings to staff, arguing that it is more important to adapt to the use of new tools than doggedly stick to old working practices.

"To bury our head in the sand and act like Twitter (and who knows what else comes into existence next month or five years from now?) isn't increasingly becoming the source of what informs people in real time is ridiculous," he said on his blog.

This difference in opinion on how Twitter should be handled by two of the world's leading digital media wires highlights the thought that all businesses must put into how they want staff to use social media, especially Twitter.

As we've reported on more than one occasion the service's instant, non-stop, real-time ethos can catch out those unaware of just how dangerous posting without thinking can be.

Furthermore, in an update to the story, AP's executive editor, Kathleen Carroll, told journalists that releasing such information on Twitter can put colleagues at risk.

"Even in the US, it's not outlandish to think that a tweet that's taken by someone in authority to be opinionated or sarcastic could lead to one of our staffers being held longer than necessary," Carroll noted.

"Imagine you're that staffer. Would you want to be kept behind bars by a colleague's thoughtless tweet?"

There aren't going to be many firms that have to worry about whether a message on Twitter could lead to a member of staff being banged up for longer than necessary, but it shows that you've got to think of all the possibilities in this brave new world of social media.

Despite all the tough talking rhetoric from the prime minister following the recent UK riots about potentially banning social media in times of unrest, the meeting between the home secretary, police chiefs and social media representatives on Thursday steered well clear of this contentious topic.

It is understood that the issue of restricting services such as Facebook, Twitter and BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), all of which were to a lesser or greater extent blamed for the riots, was never a topic for discussion.

This is despite calls from Tottenham MP David Lammy for a ban on BBM at times of social disorder and David Cameron's own admission that the government "is working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these web sites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality".

Instead, the meeting is believed to have focused on how the police can build up their skills to monitor social networks more effectively.

"We welcome the fact that this was a dialogue about working together to keep people safe rather than about imposing new restrictions on internet services," said Facebook in a statement.

"We were pleased to highlight our array of effective reporting tools and the relationships we have built with law enforcement to keep the site safe for the 30 million people in the UK use Facebook - especially during times of crisis."

A similarly bland statement came from the Home Office.

"The home secretary, along with the culture secretary and foreign office minister Jeremy Browne, has held a constructive meeting with the Association of Chief Police officers, the police and representatives from the social media industry," it read.

"The discussions looked at how law enforcement and the networks can build on the existing relationships and co-operation to crack down on the networks being used for criminal behaviour."

It's certainly good news that the government apparently understands the good that social networks can do in rallying communities after and during such heinous events and in providing law enforcement with invaluable intelligence in catching those who organised such crimes.

We all suspected the worst when the prime minister came out with his initial statements, but thankfully another knee-jerk reaction from out-of-touch politicians has not reared its head, giving way instead to a more thoughtful and considered approach.

It remains to be seen whether rights campaigners will seek assurances from the social networks that private data is not just being handed over to police in these situations as a matter of course.

While it's good to see co-operation between the tech companies and law enforcement, no-one would want that relationship to begin eroding individual privacy rights online.

Two men who used Facebook in an attempt to incite disorder during the London riots were jailed on Tuesday at Chester Crown Court.

Jordan Blackshaw, 20, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, were each sentenced to four years behind bars, even though the Facebook posts did not lead to any criminal activity.

Cheshire Constabulary Assistant Chief Constable Phil Thompson welcomed the verdict as a "strong message" to social networking users thinking about stirring up trouble.

"The sentences passed down today recognise how technology can be abused to incite criminal activity, and sends a strong message to potential troublemakers," he said.

"If we cast our minds back just a few days to last week and recall the way in which technology was used to spread incitement and bring people together to commit acts of criminality, it is easy to understand the four-year sentences that were handed down in court today."

Thompson claimed that the Cheshire police force had quickly realised the way in which social media was being used by rioters and looters to incite trouble and create fear in communities.

According to a report in The Guardian, Blackshaw and Sutcliffe-Keenan set up event pages on Facebook to invite 'friends' to "smash down" and riot, but neither page resulted in actual rioting.

Blackshaw is reported to have turned up to his event alone, where he was immediately arrested.

The sentences are just further worrying signs that the government and police blame social media sites for the riots, rather than addressing the underlying problems in UK society.

In a speech to the House of Commons last Thursday, prime minister David Cameron suggested that social media sites, and communication technologies such as BlackBerry Messenger, could even be banned during times of social unrest.

Clearly the authorities lack a firm understanding of social media, and have overlooked the good it can bring, such as how Facebook and Twitter united people to clean up the mess after the riots.

The authorities must also have used BBM and social media to track the would-be rioters, so a ban on these tools would end up making the job of policing harder.

It was easy for the police to track down Blackshaw and Sutcliffe-Keenan and use them as scapegoats, but reacting to the riots with sentencing which is completely out of proportion to the crime will only exacerbate the perceived social injustice against which many were rioting in the first place.