New funding values Twitter at US$1bn

Twitter has been valued at US$1bn (£614m) after a new round of funding to the tune of $50m (£30m) announced by the micro-blogging site's chief executive, Evan Williams. The company is said to have raised US$55m (£33m) to date, and to have around US$30m (£18m) in cash.

Insight Venture Partners, a New York private equity firm, which has raised funds of $3bn, is thought to be the biggest investor in this latest round of funding, according to a report on TechCrunch.

However, while financial analysts have arrived at the US$1bn price tag by extrapolating from the valuation of the funding Twitter achieved in February, a report in The Wall Street Journal quotes finance professor Anant Sundarem as saying that Twitter could be worth as much as US$2.7bn (£1.6bn).

Sandarem assumes that Twitter will be able to drive profit in a similar way to Google because of its low-cost, high-margin business and huge user base, said the report.

Twitter said in February that it would start creating more revenue-generating products after raising US$35m (£21m) in funding from US venture capital firms Bechmark and Institutional Venture Partners. The funding was thought to have increased Twitter's valuation to US$250m (£153m).

Twitter said in a blog post at the time that it had not actively sought the funds, but that investors were attracted to the firm because of its strong growth. It is unclear whether this next round of funding is a similar deal.

What is clear, however, is that the revenue-generating products like Account Verification, which Twitter is currently rolling out in beta, look set to continue.