Twitter chief rules out IPO for several years

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.

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