Six things Twitter doesn't want you to know
LONDON - Twitter has seen the internet flooded with 310 of its most confidential documents including partner agreements, financial projections and security passcodes after it fell foul of hackers. Here are six of the juiciest snippets from the company's secret files.
1) Twitter’s internal growth forecast puts the microblogging site at 25 million users by the end of 2009, rising to 100 million by the end of 2010 and a staggering 350 million by the end of 2011 (this would make it almost twice the size of Facebook, which is currently the world's largest social networking site with 200 million users).
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2) The microblogging site is expecting to generate $46 million of operating profit on $140 million of revenue by the end of 2010 (Click here to see how Twitter plans to do this). By 2013 it expects to be making $1.54 billion in revenue and $111 million in net earnings. By this time is reckons it will have one billion users and 5,200 employees.
3) Twitter apparently plans to offer a range of 'official' branded merchandise, including baseball caps and t-shirts emblazoned with the company’s logo.
4) As of February, Twitter had $45 million in the bank. No wonder co-founder Biz Stone isn’t in a rush to roll out a commercial offering. "We’re not under any pressure to hit a home run," he told Revolution recently. "We want to take our time and get this right".
5) Twitter expects the cost of each user to the company to be just over $1 a year, not bad considering some microbloggers post hundreds of tweets a day.
6) Twitter bosses Biz Stone, Jack Dorsey and Evan Williams received an email from production studio Through The Eyes Production pitching the idea of a themed reality-TV show called 'Final Tweet'. According to the email, ‘Final Tweet' pits four teams of entrepreneurs against some non-profit organisations for a cash pot of $100,000.
Biz Stone has confirmed the documents, first published by TechCrunch, are legitimate, but says they are out-of-date and were never considered official. "Obviously, these docs are not polished or ready for prime time and they're certainly not revealing some big, secret plan for taking over the world, he wrote on his blog.
Twitter: 310 confidential documents revealed by hacker
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Comments
Richard Hayter - 16/07/2009
Can someone explain to me who they will achieve point 2?
Richard Hayter - 16/07/2009
Sorry, I meant "how" they will achieve point 2.
Mark Palmer - 16/07/2009
Should have learned by now that the VC funders and their management consultants don't do the how...just the model of the numbers on the one or 2 previous examples that have converted web user base to cash.
Jonathan Harris - 16/07/2009
1 billion users? 1 BILLION?!?!? I'd say that is slightly optimistic. Also, I'd love to see them break this down between "users" and "active users".
Stanley - 17/07/2009
Good golly, point 2 made me laugh. Who or what dreamt up these figures. If this was dragons den \(which it isn't) and i was a dragon \(which i'm not) i would be furious. In a few years time twitter will more than likely be obsolete and we'll be discussing the proposed finances and growth of some other digital shite. So there.
Sean Goulart - 17/07/2009
Wow! The secret about the Twitter T-shirts and hats has been exposed...incredible.
Mathew Jacob - 19/07/2009
Good point, Jonathan.