Twitter goes public: $10bn: 140 characters - Telegraph.co.uk ~ Electronic Gadgets

The question now, of course, is what will going public mean for the site? How will a new influx of shareholder interests change it? Just 10pc of the company is being sold off, leaving its founders still owning far more than the market, but concerns remain.

Gary Buchan, director of digital marketing agency Render Positive, argues "Social networks are best when the big bucks are kept out. Because the moment the money's on the table, they always struggle to stay social." Facebook, some argue, has itself struggled to draw the line between allowing users to communicate and interrupting them with disruptive advertising. Rapid Ratings, the first ratings agency to have rated Twitter, scored the company at 18 out of 100, which is considered "very high-risk" according to RR's scale, although the agency noted that such risk was typical of many similar companies.

On the grey market however, according to IG, Twitter is levelling off at a valuation of around $17.5bn. The firm has run a number of popular grey markets over the years but based on current activity, it envisages Twitter eclipsing the interest seen for the likes of both Facebook and the Royal Mail."

And that comparison with Facebook is a conspicuous one for Twitter – its $10bn valuation seems in part aimed to counter some of the hype that saw Facebook float at a huge price and then sink back immediately. Only now, some 18 months later, have values crept back up to top the flotation price.

Joshua Raymond, Chief Marketing Strategist of Cityindex.co.uk, sees the comparison as slightly unfair. "The Twitter IPO will inevitably draw comparisons with Facebook and it has certainly captured the market in much of the same way Facebook did due to its celeb status. Yet it is a much cleaner, transparent and perhaps more comfortable investment than Facebook was." Gartner's Brian Blau says that, once public, "Twitter will need to be more transparent about their business performance and that in turn will help them better compete against the Facebooks and LinkedIns, but it will also give them the respect and trust of businesses who must now rely on the social network as one of their key their customer communications channels"

And indeed, that sense that campaigners, businesses, celebrities and politicians all rely on Twitter is perhaps the most important aspect of this unique flotation: at the moment it's a loss making business based on precious little advertising. Users see it as a platform rather than an advertising-funded company like Google or Facebook. It's challenge is to preserve that. As Rupert Staines, of RadiumOne, put it, "If Twitter is going to be a financial success, it has to monetise its biggest asset, its audience, and fast." He points out that "its particular environment is not particularly advertiser friendly" – that, unfortunately for Twitter, could prove to be the secret of its success.

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