Twitter Worth More Money Than Ever

Twitter’s value is on the up-and-up … and up. According to some potential buyers, the social-media company could be worth as much as $10 billion. And with both Facebook and Google eying up the five-year-old company, there could be a high-priced bidding war ahead.

On Wednesday, Silicon Valley company Andreessen-Horowitz bought $80 million in Twitter shares, boosting its valuation even higher. The firm wouldn’t say what percentage of the company that represented.

Twitter made around $45 million in 2010, but projects profits of around $100 million this year. In December 2010, Twitter received $200 million in new venture capital, and was valued at $3.7 billion. But then other online properties — including Facebook, Groupon, and the Huffington Post — saw high valuations on web properties. Now more and more properties are looking to cash in. Both Pandora and LinkedIn are hoping to go public and garner big valuations in the coming months.

Of note: Google and Facebook are interested in Twitter despite the fact that the site still hasn’t figured out how to monetize itself. The company continues to build infrastructure — hiring both sales and executive teams. But, warns eMarketer analyst Debra Aho Williamson, “The company is having great ad-sales momentum right now, but we still think they need to do something big to increase usage and get more people seeing and interacting with tweets. Most of their advertisers are just experimenting at this point; the challenge will be to get those advertisers to come back and buy more,”

Twitter as Tech Bubble Barometer [WSJ]

Twitter Worth More Money Than Ever