According to Greencrest Capital, Twitter may begin preparing for a public debut this year, and might even start the offer in 2014. Greencrest Capital, a firm that studies soon-to-be IPO businesses, says that Twitter’s plans are quite obvious due to the company’s recent management hirings – ex-Zynga employee Mike Gupta as the new CFO, Newsvine founder Mike Davidson joining as vice president of design, and Ali Rowghani moving from chief financial officer to chief operating officer. That’s not all.
Twitter has also improved its photo app, and its promoted tweets are becoming better at targeting users who might actually click the links. Greencrest analyst Max Wolff adds that Twitter is now valued at $11 billion. “Using the secondary market for shares to mark enterprise value is a very difficult and opaque process. It is a rumor-rich and special-share-class soup,” says Wolff. “That said, Twitter is up since the Facebook IPO and is now valued at northward of $11 billion. This makes sense as growth in users and new monetization efforts are both yielding fruit and pointing toward a good 2013 for Twitter.”