ReadWriteWeb

There is a lot of chatter in the blogosphere about the recent $100 million investment in Twitter at a $1 billion valuation, but most of it based on speculation. Twitter and Facebook are private companies. You cannot get the facts simply by typing a stock symbol into Yahoo Finance. Our mission at ReadWriteWeb is to add to the facts, not just the speculation. Rather than posting confidential information that someone has leaked to us, we prefer to start with publicly available data. That takes a lot of leg work and crawling through regulatory filings. Luckily, a firm in this industry does that professionally: the VC Experts Valuation and Terms database. It has given us access to and permission to publish the investment facts, as publicly recorded, for both Twitter and Facebook. We could not refrain from a bit of game theory speculation on how this could play out, and we invited a specialist in startup deals to add his speculation as well. But let's start with the facts.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Twitter is about to close a $100 million funding round from as many as seven investors, including T. Rowe Price, Insight Venture Partners, Spark Capital, and Institutional Venture Partners. Even though Twitter has yet to actually make money, these investors are valuing Twitter at about $1 billion. The Wall Street Journal, which is relying on information from an anonymous person "close to the deal," states that the deal could close today and would be Twitter's third and largest round of VC funding to date.

While it's unlikely that Twitter CEO Evan Williams was wearing a Dr. Evil costume when he delivered the news, he had the pleasure of announcing his company's $1 billion dollar valuation today at an all hands meeting. According to TechCrunch, the company has raised a $50 million dollar funding round and the money will be in the bank shortly. Given the fact that Twitter turned down an offer to be purchased by Facebook earlier in the year, it appears the two are about to tango.