Twitter's IPO Shares Skyrocket Out Of The Gate With $25B+ Market Cap

Alongside Yelp, Facebook, Groupon, and LinkedIn, the world is welcoming yet another social behemoth onto the public trading floor today. Twitter, the microblogging service that evolved from a place to tell people about what you were eating for lunch into a place where news is broken, is now a publicly traded company. It's IPO went live today, and while major banks were able to get a chunk at the ~$20 mark, the masses are already being asked to pay upwards of $45 per share under symbol TWTR.


Of course, it's irresponsible to consider the numbers that insider banks get compared to the laypeople relying on eTrade and ShareBuilder to make transactions, but the raw figures put the stock up around 70% on the day. Initial spikes such as this aren't at all uncommon when a popular stock (particularly a technology stock) goes public, but it's always good to see a positive reaction right out of the gate.

What's it mean for Twitter? The upside for consumers is that Twitter was already raking in revenue prior to its iPO. In some cases, companies don't fully reveal how they plan to make money until after this process, so end-users are hammered with ads and other fishy money-making tactics that leave the service a lot less appealing. Twitter, however, has been showing Sponsored Tweets and has partnered with the likes of the NFL, NBA and major TV research outlets already. In the short-term, it's unlikely that end-users will notice any difference in day-to-day use.


From a global viewpoint, Twitter is bound to get even more attention from world leaders and social up-and-comers. Already a global product, Twitter's reach really is boundless. Getting a Twitter account is as easy as getting an email account, and it could evolve into the go-to product for announcements in the future, even for huge political figures. Now, who's up for placing bets on how long it takes Twitter to receive pressure from investors to remove that 140-character limit?