The IPO tweet heard around the Twitterverse: reaction on Twitter
SAN FRANCISCO -- It was the tweet heard around the Twitterverse: “We’ve confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO. This Tweet does not constitute an offer of any securities for sale.â€
Twitter’s surprise announcement of its long-awaited initial public offering unleashed a firestorm of responses.
“I guess you might say Twitter’s IPO has been ... Verified,†technology investor Hunter Walk quipped, referring to Twitter’s practice of “verifying†the accounts of celebrities and other well-known people. He later said he was canceling his afternoon meetings to continue cracking “bad Twitter IPO jokes.â€
Many tweets mocked the company for its not-so-confidential way of revealing the filing of its “confidential†IPO.
“Super confidential, guys,†tweeted Ben Schaechter, a mobile product manager at Yahoo.
Others reflected on the dramatic transformation of the 7-year-old company.
Technology investor and blogger MG Siegler summed it up this way: “From ‘that’s the dumbest idea I’ve ever heard of’ to ‘no one outside tech will ever use that’ to ‘that will never make any money’ to IPO.â€
As for the guys with the biggest stakes in the Twitter IPO, mum was the word during the company’s government-mandated quiet period.
Twitter’s Chief Executive Dick Costolo tweeted he was reading a Q&A with Tahar Ben Jelloun regarding his short story “By Fire.†He also commented jokingly on random, non-IPO related conversation threads.
Of Twitter’s three co-founders, Ev Williams, Biz Stone and Jack Dorsey, Dorsey was the only one to obliquely refer to the IPO by linking to the “post that launched Twitter.â€
Stone made his own statement by retweeting Twitter’s announcement.
But it was journalist Kevin Roose who put it all in perspective: Twitter’s announcement that it was going public had at the time garnered 7,500 retweets. Justin Bieber just saying “hi†had nearly 66,000.
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Twitter files for an IPO: Five things you should know
