Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2009/09/17/twitter_funding/

Twitter slaps itself with $1bn price tag

Seeks more money for bonfire of inanities

By Bill Ray

Posted in Networks, 17th September 2009 10:00 GMT

Twitter is trying to raise another $50m, pushing the (self) valuation of the company above a billion dollars, despite lacking an income of any kind.

News of the new round of funding and valuation comes from "multiple sources" according to TechCrunch: we've not managed to get confirmation as yet but if it's true then it gets added to the $35m the company raised earlier this year.

Quite why Insight Venture Partners - fingered by TechCrunch as the primary investor - would be pouring money into a business that has no revenue model and no obvious sign of developing one, we don't know.

Not that this prevents other companies making money out of Twitter: telephony outfit Jajah has just announced Twitter integration, allowing twits to talk to each other for two minutes though connections established by tweet, and various PR companies use tweets to update eager fans. But none of that puts money in the hands of Twitter, or its investors.

Twitter recently modified the Terms and Conditions to make it clear it has the right to do anything with tweets - including copying, publishing, modifying and using, but rather cutely then proclaims "they are your tweets and they belong to you".

Twitter also likes to talk in vague terms about premium services and advertising, but exactly how that's going to work is a mystery. But at least it is one that another $50m will postpone resolving for a year or two. ®