For the Birds: Waiting for Twitter’s IPO Filing Tweet
Here I am on Thursday in my office in a hipster SOMA neighborhood of San Francisco on one of the few perfectly sunny and warm days that we get here in the foggy city by the Bay.
I could be out having a Kombucha over at the twee Small grocery store — it’s like the Google cafeteria, but you have to overpay for everything — on 2nd Street. Or partaking of an ironic grilled cheese down the street. Or lolling about in South Park, enjoying an interpretive dance performance by some dot-com youngster.
But no, instead I am sitting on pins and needles here inside my cave waiting for Twitter to drop its IPO documents on the Securities and Exchange Commission site and then adorkably tweet about it.
That’s how the news that the microblogging service had filed for its long-expected public offering was delivered and that’s how it’s going to be again, I would assume.
According to sources, the company will reveal the docs today after the markets close, which will value it at $15 billion. Unless it is tomorrow. Or Monday. (For those tuning in from Twitter: #screwthegovernmentshutdown.)
In fact, the Twitter founders gathered today at the global HQ in San Francisco, so it’s pretty clear it is about to drop. Also, bankers are blabbing all over the ying-yang, shoving each other aside to claim credit for doing precisely none of the heavy work it took to get Twitter to this moment.
Twitter founders (@ev, @biz, @jack) in the house today. pic.twitter.com/9Hu32uxS6N
— Luke Millar (@ltm) October 3, 2013
This is what it has come to. (Also, apropos of nothing: I am clearly too old for this, since I have covered Internet IPOs since the early 1990s.)
In any case, me and some of the ATD staff are ready for today, which is why Peter Kafka is ensconced in his new home in Brooklyn and Mike Isaac is working someone’s last nerve at a Starbucks in New York.
Our goal is to say the same thing everyone else will be saying about tech’s biggest IPO in a while, but better. (Damn, the New York Times’ Nick Bilton has a whole book coming out soon, so he might smoke me!)
Sigh. (Personally, I blame CEO Dick Costolo for this dog-and-pony show, although it is more organized than Facebook’s goat rodeo, for sure!)
Right now, Twitter’s account only has a tweet from five hours ago that says this:
We tested live-tweeting with @MLB to see if teams could boost follower engagement and their Twitter audience: https://t.co/XPhHmVDNxJ
— Twitter (@twitter) October 3, 2013
I do not care about this, although my son will surely be thrilled. (Also apropos of nothing, but I had no idea that the Twitter account had 24.6 million followers.)
In case you did not get this by now: This is the definition of a tech loser.
Tweet.
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