Twitter's IPO Filing Explained in 40 Tweets

Oct. 4, 2013 — -- intro: Twitter released its S-1, or IPO, filing Thursday -- more than 235 pages of information about the core business and financials of the company built around 140-character messages. While some of the big questions remain unanswered -- including the exchange the shares will be traded on and their issue price -- there are lots of answers to questions about Twitter's profits, sources of revenue and future buried in the long document.

The business nerds out there can read all the fine print here. For the rest of us, we have come up with the things you should know from the stock-offer filing in 40 simple tweets.

quicklist: 1category:

title: 1. TWTR! #Twitter intends to list the common stock of the company under the symbol TWTR

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quicklist: 2category: title: 2. #Twitter has over 200 million monthly active users and 100 million daily active usersurl:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 3category: title: 3. Add this one to the list! 500 million tweets are sent a day url:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 4category: title: 4. "Tweets are limited to 140 characters of text." The filing really explains thaturl:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 5category: title: 5. Tweets have appeared on over 1 million websites url:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 6category: title: 6. "Twitter," the "Twitter bird logo," "Tweet," "Retweet": All trademarks that belong to Twitter. No mention of the fail whale url:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 7category: title: 75% of Twitter's monthly average users access the service from a mobile device #SadDayForComputersurl:text: media: 17261032caption: related:

quicklist: 8category: title: 8. #Advertising: 65% of the company's ad dollars were generated from mobile devices url:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 9category: title: 9. Just how many ads is Twitter selling each year? Almost $270M worth. Twitter generated 85% of its $317M in sales from advertisingurl:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 10category: title: 10. How many shares of Twitter will be for sale? 472,613,753 shares url:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 11category: title: 11. Twitter states some of its business risks, including the threat of users engaging with other products and privacy and security concerns #riskybusiness url:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 12category: title: 12. So who is going to be rich? CEO @dickc took home $11.5M last year and he owns 1.6% of @Twitter url:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 13category: title: 13. Co-founder @jack should be able to buy a lifetime supply of Cardinals tickets. He owns 4.9% of @Twitter url:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 14category: title: 14. Co-founder and former CEO @ev owns the largest chunk of the company at 12% #GreenBirdurl:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 15category: title: 15. How much money will I get for being a Twitter user? $0. url:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 16category: title: 16. In 2012 @Twitter spent $86.5M on sales and marketing, almost as much as it spent on R&D, $119M #IPO #S1 url:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 17category: title: 17. During Super Bowl XLVII, over 24M tweets regarding the Super Bowl were sent, 45% of TV ads shown during the game used a #hashtag #TwitterIPO url:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 18category: title: 18. The other big execs / directors at Twitter who make $$$$ with IPO: @AdamBain @chfry @PeterChernin @plscurrie @PeterFenton @RosenblattDavid url:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 19category: title: 19. @dickc took one for the team in August 2013 and reduced his annual salary to $14,000. #millionaire url:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 20category: title: 20. @oreo will never turn off the lights. The never-ending example of real-time marketing lives on even in @Twitter's IPO url:text: media:18395895caption: related:

quicklist: 21category: title: 21. #Twitter101: Twitter was founded in 2007 and is headquartered in SF. It has over 2,000 employees url:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 22category: title: 22. Twitter's going to be in SF for at least a few more years. In 2011, the company entered into an office space lease with a 6-year term url:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 23category: title: 23. Twitter's making most of its money in the U.S., but international sales are growing url:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 24category: title: 24. Where Twitter is focusing its international spending and sales support: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Japan and the United Kingdomurl:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 25category: title: 25. Twitter's new ad strategies -- TV targeting and real-time video clips embedded in tweets url:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 26category: title: 26. Twitter makes you watch TV -- an August 2013 Nielsen study finds Tweets about a show caused an increase in ratings in 29% of sampled programsurl:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 27category: title: 27. You gotta spend $ to make $, especially if you're Twitter. Last year the company had a loss of $74.9 million on $317 million in sales url:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 28category: title: 28. #Facebook is mentioned 9 times in the filing. Twitter says Facebook has been introducing "features similar" to theirs url:text: media:19383386caption: related:

quicklist: 29category: title: 29. Twitter says Facebook disabled Instagram embeds in tweets after it bought the service #WhyWeCantHaveNiceThingsurl:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 30category: title: 30. Wondering about ads in Vine? "We do not currently place, or currently plan to place, ads on Vine," the filing reads url:text: media: 19364747caption: related:

quicklist: 31category: title:31. Remember Twitter #Music? Twitter mentions that it doesn't plan to put ads in the app. It also doesn't mention how many people actually use iturl:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 32category: title: 32. "@Twitter is open to the world." #S1 #IPOurl:text: media:caption: related:

quicklist: 33category: title: 33. @MorganStanley, which led FB's botched IPO, got pushed to #2 underwriter. @GoldmanSachs took the leadurl:text: media: 16377892caption: related:

quicklist: 34category: title: 34. In January 2013 3.5 Million shares tendered for $17.00 per shareurl:text: media: caption: related:

quicklist: 35category: title: 35. @sparkcapital and @benchmark got in on Twitter between Dec 2010 - January 2011 and bought 26.2M shares at approx $7.63/shareurl:text: media: caption: related:

quicklist: 36category: title: 36. The British Monarchy announced the birth of Prince George on Twitter #RoyalBabyurl:text: media: caption: related:

quicklist: 37category: title: 37. While pictured in the report, the @Twitter bird does not appear to have any stock options url:text: media: 20251823caption: related:

quicklist: 38category: title: 38. The cost of doing business (publicly): Twitter paid the SEC $128,800 in registration fees and $150,500 in FINRA filing feesurl:text: media: caption: related:

quicklist: 39category: title: 39. The S-1 filing is 752,887 characters long (with spaces). That's over 5,000 tweetsurl:text: media: caption: related:

quicklist: 40category: title: 40. Only 100 more to go until 140 tweets. Yeah, no, we're tired. Let us know on @twitter if you've got any others for us at @rebeccajarvis @joannasternurl:text: media: caption: related: