Twitter Is Going Public, Files S-1 With SEC ALEX WILHELM

2013-09-12_14h21_11 Today Twitter confirmed that it has filed an S-1 with the SEC and is therefore on the road to going public. This is an important moment for Twitter, and for tech, as it shows that the IPO window is open. Here’s Twitter on its filing: Count to 10 and let’s hope the damn thing leaks right away. We don’t know much, but expect Twitter to go public at a valuation of roughly between $15 billion and $20 billion, roughly. Its last private money came in at around a $10 billion valuation, and those investors will want a return on their funds. Goldman Sachs is said to be the lead underwriter of the offering. Facebook’s IPO, for comparison, valued the social giant at around $100 billion on the day of its flotation. The irony here is that Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg yesterday at Disrupt told the world that it should not be afraid of going public. Twitter did not decide to go public on the back of Zuck’s axiom, but it is nicely pat that it announced this news the day after his comments. Facebook’s public offering was marred with trading errors and a slipping stock price, and the company lost tens of billions of value before it recovered. Facebook is currently trading at fresh highs, helping to set the stage for Twitter: Whatever the Facebook IPO hangover was, it is no more. Twitter’s public offering has been a very long time in coming, and contains inside of it oodles of institutional pressure: With hundreds of millions of invested capital under its belt, Twitter has a number of investors that want their money back. It has been well-managed, sure, but cash has a certain feel to it. The IPO will be a zoo. But it will be a fun zoo, and that is all that matters. The NASDAQ and the NYSE are at war a bit on who gets to host more tech offerings, but I think that we’ll be seeing the NASDAQ scoop up this deal. Now, what are Twitter’s revenue and profit figures? We’ll actually get to know soon, though the fact they are filing in this fashion does imply that Twitter had less than $1 billion in revenue in 2012. So, there’s that. Top Image Credit: Emmanuel Huybrechts

Ten Tiny Apps That I'm Thankful For

This is Thanksgiving, so I’d like to show some gratitude for ten tiny apps that I use almost every day. If you’re a writer, blogger, speaker, or entrepreneur who uses a Macintosh, please give them a look because they will make you more productive.

1. 
   Adjix. Adjix is the best way that I’ve found to post links to web pages on Twitter. It shortens the URL of the page, enables you to edit the tweet, shows you the ever-important character count, and renders a preview of the page you’re linking to so that you can be sure of what you’re tweeting. Price: Free.
2. 
   BBEdit. BBEdit is admittedly overkill for the HTML editing that I do. However, it does a great job of formatting text into XHTML, and it houses the SmartPants UNIX filter that I use to smarten quotes and dashes (see below). Generally speaking, if BBEdit can’t do what you want to text, it probably can’t be done. Price: $125.
3. 
   Foxmarks. I use Firefox on three different Macintoshes, so I need to synchronize your bookmarks across them all. Foxmarks enables you to do this as well as create a backup of them. I wish other programs did synching so cleanly. Price: Free.
4. 
   MarsEdit. I use MarsEdit to write my blog postings for my blog, the Alltop blog, and the American Express OPEN Forum. I compose in MarsEdit because of the built-in HTML markup features and then finish the writing in BBEdit. What would make me even more thankful: MobileMe synchronization of drafts. Price: $29.95.
5. 
   Preview. Preview is simple application to open up graphics and text files. I use it to resize screenshots and to annotate them with circles and comments. It can also send your photos to iPhoto for storage. Skitch is another application that does this if Preview doesn’t have enough power for you. Price: Free.
6. 
   SmartyPants. I hate dumb apostrophes, quotes, and dashes but replacing them is not simple because HMTL links must contain dumb quotation marks—for example, href=”http://daringfireball.net/projects/smartypants/”. However, in regular text, I want replace a dumb quotes with smart ones. SmartyPants knows that HTML links should not be smartened while apostrophes, quotes, and dashes should. Price: Free.
7. 
   TextExpander. This is a utility that expands abbreviations to full text. For example, it expands “gk” to “Guy Kawasaki.” I use about ninety of these abbreviations. I’d be even more thankful if it didn’t sometimes paste the clipboard not the desired abbreviation. Incidentally, I love a competitive product called TypeIt4me, but it cannot synchochronize my abbreviations across multiple Macintoshes via MobileMe like TextExpander can. Price: $29.95.
8. 
   Tweetdeck. This is a front-end application to Twitter. I have to stay on top of many terms in Twitter such as “Guykawasaki,” “Guy Kawasaki,” and “Alltop” as well as private and public messages to me. It is the best way to use Twitter that I have found. Price: voluntary donation, so I sent $50.
9. 
   Twittelator Pro. I use this iPhone application to access Twitter. In a sense, for me it’s Tweetdeck on a phone. I’d be more thankful if I could customize the menus structure, but it’s still the best iPhone application for Twitter that I’ve found. Price: $4.99.
10. 
    Yojimbo. This is my catch-all for things like passwords, invoices, travel confirmations, and bills—basically all the stuff you know you’ll need someday but don’t know how to store. You “print to Yojimbo,” and this creates a PDF of the document and stores it in the application. Then you can do a freeform search for any text to find the information later. Price: $39.

    ---

    Update: Several readers told me to look at Evernote, and they are right. This is a cross-platform application and service that enables you to synch information across Macintosh, Windows, and iPhone. I’ve been using it for a four days, and it’s very good. You should check it out.

There you have it: my favorite tiny applications that make me more productive on a Macintosh. As you can see, a few bucks goes a long way these days! My heartfelt thanks to the men and women who created and support them. Happy Thanksgiving!

November 24, 2008 in Cool stuff | Permalink

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