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Serial Web2.0 investor pumps Twitter valuation to $8bn

$57m per character

Twitter closed a "significant round of funding" yesterday, with lots of help from the Russian venture outfit that has already pumped large sums of cash into Facebook, Groupon et al.

The micro-blogging site said that serial Web2.0 investor Digital Sky Technologies Global (DST Global) led the Twitter funding round, but didn't reveal how much money was involved.

According to Kara Swisher at All Things Digital, DST stacked up a large part of the total $800m cash pile that Twitter aims to raise. An insider told Bloomberg that DST Global's contribution amounted to $400m, but the company declined to confirm this, although it did confirm the deal. Half of that money is understood to have been dished out to staff and shareholders at the privately-held company.

The funding round reportedly tagged Twitter's valuation at $8bn.

Twitter, which has more than doubled its employee headcount to 600 people in the past 12 months, said it was now generating over 200 million tweets per day on the service.

"We’ve come very far in a short time. 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," said the company.

"We will use these resources to aggressively innovate, hire more great people and invest in international expansion." ®

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