$1bn Facebook backer eyes Twitter stake
DIGITAL Sky Technologies, the Russian firm with a $1bn (£644bn) stake in Facebook, is considering buying shares in micro-blogging site Twitter.
In its recent financing round, Twitter was valued at $3.7bn, despite advertising revenues said to be around $100m last year.
If DST went ahead with the move, it would mean that that the company would have stakes in nearly all of the well-known pre-float tech firms that investors are chasing, including online gaming site Zynga, voucher-buying site Groupon and Facebook.
DST grabbed headlines recently after it added $50m to its investment in Facebook as part of Goldman Sachs’ $2bn funding round for the social networking site.
Facebook shares are now said to be selling for over $55 on trading sites for high net worth investors such as SharesPost.com, which would value the company at $124bn.
Meanwhile, US courts have subpoened Twitter for private messages and connection records for the account of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.
TWITTER IN NUMBERS
175m Registered users of the site
95m “Tweets” of up to 140 characters posted each day
300 Employees, and counting
7.7m Number of followers of Twitter’s most popular user, Lady Gaga
217 Number of MPs with Twitter accounts
$100m Revenues from advertising for the site
6 Languages in which Twitter is available
$3.7bn Recent valuation