{"id":205,"date":"2009-02-14T12:17:00","date_gmt":"2009-02-14T12:17:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vhirsch.wordpress.com\/2009\/02\/14\/twitter-raises-more-cash\/"},"modified":"2009-02-14T12:17:00","modified_gmt":"2009-02-14T12:17:00","slug":"twitter-raises-more-cash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/2009\/02\/14\/twitter-raises-more-cash\/","title":{"rendered":"Twitter Raises More Cash"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_krrmJx627x4\/SZa7lZtaAmI\/AAAAAAAADyM\/KqTZLdv4Dxk\/s1600-h\/twitter_logo.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:left;cursor:hand;width:200px;height:74px;margin:0 10px 10px 0;\" src=\"http:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/_krrmJx627x4\/SZa7lZtaAmI\/AAAAAAAADyM\/KqTZLdv4Dxk\/s200\/twitter_logo.jpg\" border=\"0\" alt=\"\" \/><\/a>I and many others had been <a href=\"http:\/\/volkersthoughts.blogspot.com\/2009\/01\/twitter-on-money-trail-again.html\">speculating<\/a> if they did or did not need new money (founder Biz Stone <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.twitter.com\/2009\/02\/opportunity-knocks.html\">says<\/a> they didn&#8217;t) and amidst people scraping together money, fearing long, cold winters of recession, Twitter <a href=\"http:\/\/blog.twitter.com\/2009\/02\/opportunity-knocks.html\">raised<\/a> a more than respectable third round of $35m led by tier-1 VCs Benchmark and IVP. This can, according to some <a href=\"http:\/\/www.techcrunch.com\/2009\/02\/13\/twitter-raises-third-round-of-funding-from-benchmark-and-ivp\/\">sources<\/a>, still grow as existing investors want to protect their dilution (which would make sense, I suppose). Congrats, folks!<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>According to Stone&#8217;s blog, they do not need the money. However, they felt the offer was so good that they could not say &#8220;no&#8221;&#8230; As they would say&#8230;<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>What is it for then? And, ah yes, they want to use some of the capital to &#8220;help build their revenue-generating projects&#8221;. And that&#8217;s about time, too! On the other hand, let&#8217;s not be too derogative: they have been growing at an amazing speed (the numbers <a href=\"http:\/\/volkersthoughts.blogspot.com\/2009\/01\/twitter-on-money-trail-again.html\">I had<\/a> were 780% last year; Biz Stone now ups them to more than 900%) and with the media making the right noises and even secondary Twitter businesses being <a href=\"http:\/\/www.paidcontent.org\/entry\/419-twitter-add-on-tweetdeck-raises-seed-funding\">funded<\/a> (which often do have at least the hint of a &#8220;how-to-make-money&#8221; set-up though), there certainly is something in this. That Twitter has its uses for businesses is a tale that you can read about from hundreds, including the traffic kings <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/guykawasaki\">Guy Kawasaki<\/a> and <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/mashable\">Peter Cashmore<\/a> (Mashable); the Twittersphere is full of &#8220;top-20-business-uses&#8221; style how-to guides.\u00a0<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>How will Twitter itself monetize on this? Rumours are flying as always and they range from paid-for corporate accounts to advertising to, presumably, big-media tie-ins. There is so much room to look when you are commanding this big and active a user base that there a plenty of angles; the Twitterati may be younger and poorer than the average (there&#8217;s recently been a &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/tech.yahoo.com\/news\/pcworld\/20090213\/tc_pcworld\/whotweetsatwittercensus\">Twitter census<\/a>&#8220;)but they are at home in the new social media and they are ultra-mobile with a higher proportion on laptop and mobile usage. Welcome to the future then! I had <a href=\"http:\/\/volkersthoughts.blogspot.com\/2009\/01\/twitter-on-money-trail-again.html\">suggested<\/a> a few possible avenues previously; and if even I can do it, I am sure they can do it&#8230; \ud83d\ude09<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Oh, and if you wish, follow me on Twitter <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/vhirsch\">here<\/a>.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I and many others had been speculating if they did or did not need new money (founder Biz Stone says they didn&#8217;t) and amidst people scraping together money, fearing long, cold winters of recession, Twitter raised a more than respectable third round of $35m led by tier-1 VCs Benchmark and IVP. This can, according to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[],"tags":[73,78,306,317,364,666,683,684],"class_list":["post-205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-benchmark-capital","tag-biz-stone","tag-institutional-venture-partners","tag-ivp","tag-mashable","tag-twitter","tag-vc","tag-venture-capital"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/paSwZv-3j","jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vhirsch.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}