Twitter hopes to raise $1 billion in IPO

THE microblogging site hopes to raise $1 billion in their initial public offering, although they haven't yet revealed which exchange it will be listed on.

Twitter has revealed its highly anticipated stock offering, seeking to raise $US1 billion for the popular messaging platform.

The California firm says it has 218 million active users as of June 30, and its revenue was down almost $US80 million ($A85.47 million) from nearly $US317 million ($A338.66 million) in 2012. The company said it had more than 218 million active users as of the end of June, up 44 per cent from a year earlier. That compares with Facebook's nearly 1.2 billion and LinkedIn's 240 million. The company disclosed last month that it had filed confidential IPO papers to start the process of going public.

On Thursday, San Francisco-based Twitter Inc unsealed the papers with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Twitter booked a larger loss in the first half of this year than a year earlier, but it grew revenue.

The company lost $US69.3 million in the first six months of 2013, compared with $US49.1 million at the same time last year. Revenue more than doubled to $US254 million from $US122 million.

Twitter did not say which stock exchange it plans to list its shares on, though the company says it intends to use the ticker symbol TWTR.

The underwriters of the offering are Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, BofA Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank Securities and CODE Advisors.

Twitter's IPO has been long expected. The company has been ramping up its advertising products and working to boost ad revenue in preparation.

But it is still tiny compared with Facebook, which saw its hotly-anticipated IPO implode last year amid worries about its ability to grow mobile ad revenue.

Twitter's money-making potential has minted the company with an estimated market value of $US10 billion ($A10.68 billion), based on the appraisals of venture capitalists and other early investors. The IPO could value it higher or lower. PrivCo analyst Sam Hamadeh says he expects Twitter to aim for a market value of about $US15 billion ($A16.02 billion) when it prices its IPO.

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