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Twitter Gets Major Funding, Adds New Data Center

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the power-up dept.

1sockchuck writes "Twitter has announced new funding led by Kleiner Perkins, with reports placing the new round at $200 million for a valuation of $3.7 billion. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said the microblogging service added more than 100 million new accounts in the past 12 months. That kind of growth requires a lot of servers, so Twitter will open a new data center in Sacramento as it begins to operate its own facilities, following a path forged by Google and Facebook."

12 of 125 comments (clear)

  1. Yay... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Another company blows all their money on a data center...

    In 5 years, the newest fad will arrive, and Twitter will be out of business, or suffer extreme drops in revenue and users.

    Don't believe me? How's MySpace these days? Or Gawker? Or one of the other dot-coms that went under after their popularity waned.

    1. Re:Yay... by Stregano · · Score: 4, Funny

      There must be like a million better uses for it

      coke and hookers?

      --
      The world is how you make it
    2. Re:Yay... by dummondwhu · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yes, it surely makes no sense to grow as much as possible when the opportunity presents itself because it's going to all come undone at some point. We might as well hide under our beds instead of going to work. Hell, I know the work I'm doing now is going to be a useless piece of shit in a decade, so why bother?

    3. Re:Yay... by AbRASiON · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How did this get +3 on the moderation? I'm going to guess twitter haters?
      Not all huge sites are shrinking in size, look at facebook, youtube, google themselves.

      Twitter is one of the greatest new forms of communications in the last 20 years.
      My first 2 tweets stayed for 6+ months iirc and were just "twitter is lame" and "update: twitter is still a wank" or something like that.
      I didn't 'get' twitter.

      Now that I do, I do not understand why on earth SMS still exists, this website / application(s) allows me to talk to people instantly across the planet with a 0$ fee (unlike SMS) and I can include pictures, links or whatever, I can use trending topics to see what is big in the world right this second! (yes, that's big)
      When someone posts "is that an earthquake?!" I go to twitter, type in earthquake and can have confirmation in seconds

      Twitter allows manufacturers, famous people and important people to instantly share messages and thoughts with people. There is an awful awful lot of stupid and irrelivant shit, mark my words I understand this but inbetween all that it's amazing, utterly amazing.

      I can see my friends have conversations - and yes they can do it privately but they can also do it publically, that ability to see their conversation - is almost like being at a resteraunt or bar where everyone is having a chat - my ears are tuning in (if I desire) to their conversation and I can at any moment join in, all wirelessly, all instantly - in any timezone.

      I don't often praise things and it sure as shit took me a while to get it, infact until you literally have an account and follow a couple of people, I totally get hating on it - the interface is silly to understand at first, once you do get it - it's incredible, utterly incredible.

      My only problem with twitter, or rather their only problem is that I simply can not fathom how they can monetize it - in any way. Google however purchased Youtube and I distinctly recall me saying "what the fuck is google thinking? 4 billion? That's stupid - this is googles first big mistake" - I mean there was no ads back then and it was 5 years ago, bandwidth is fucking expensive and they just paid money to serve up terabytes of data a day, why?!
      Anyhow: TLDR is that twitter should utterly replace SMS, without question, SMS is completely dead to me, all my friends with twitter I can tweet in seconds, it's a fucking incredibly powerful and clever communications tool, once you learn it, you'll love it.

  2. One question that we all want to know by santax · · Score: 5, Funny

    Now, when they get that second server, will we be able to at least get 255 chars in a tweet?

  3. Another fine investment decision... by Denny · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Are Twitter at any point going to get a revenue stream?

    --
    Police State UK - news and
    1. Re:Another fine investment decision... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      This is a popular response, but they've been profitable since they began the Google/Bing search deals last November/December. It looks like this round is to catalyse and sustain growth.

    2. Re:Another fine investment decision... by rochocinco · · Score: 3, Informative

      Where are you getting that info? There were a lot of reports end of last year about them being profitable. But, in August of this year, they admitted they are not profitable. There is an interview on CNN Money.

  4. The funding was delivered in the form... by forkfail · · Score: 3, Funny

    ... of 1,428,571 $1.40 checks, so it'll take a while before they can actually use it...

    --
    Check your premises.
  5. Says something about the state of things by thewils · · Score: 3, Funny

    Consecutive articles on /. $30M for biofuel research, $200M for twitter. We're fucked, but at least we can tweet about it.

    --
    Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
  6. Twitter... I just don't get it by dskoll · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Maybe I'm too old (hey... get off my lawn! Sorry...) but I just don't get the appeal of Twitter. Billions of tweets per day of which maybe 7 aren't banal. Never mind the business model, I just don't get anything about Twitter.

    1. Re:Twitter... I just don't get it by Facegarden · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Maybe I'm too old (hey... get off my lawn! Sorry...) but I just don't get the appeal of Twitter. Billions of tweets per day of which maybe 7 aren't banal. Never mind the business model, I just don't get anything about Twitter.

      Maybe you are too old. I use Twitter to see what my friends are doing. The old people will say "bah, well I *call* my friends and talk to them, grumble grumble", but I can't call everyone all the time. I have friends that I don't talk to that often, because we run in different circles, but that doesn't mean I don't care about them. If they got a new job or they're having fun on a vacation, I'm happy to know, just the same as if I bumped into them at a party and they told me. It's not highly meaningful discourse, but it's not different from a lot of the interactions we have with people on a daily basis. Only I don't have to live across the street from them to bump into them.

      Specifically, I live in Silicon Valley near San Jose, and I have a lot of friends who live in San Francisco. I'm busy, and I work crazy hours, so its nice to just get an idea for what they're up to. Or sometimes they'll share a funny link, and that amuses me. I use twitter on my Android phone, so it's best for idle time - waiting for a computer to reboot, waiting for the microwave, waiting for Starbucks to finish my drink. Just times where I have a few minutes, and I'd otherwise just stare off somewhere. At Starbucks, actually, I normally try to chat with people so as to not be antisocial, but sometimes there's no one to chat with. So I check twitter and find out what my friends are doing.

      And often they're talking about plans they have to go to a party, or go to a concert or some cool event, and then I give them a call and might go myself an meet up with them. So I get to go to a party with a friend that I may not have realized was happening, just because of twitter.

      So plenty of people don't get twitter, but I'm a real person who gets real use out of it. I may not have explained it perfectly, but all I can say is that it fits in with my lifestyle. I'm a 26 year old techie, your lifestyle may vary and twitter may be useless to you.

      But more so than anything, I find it funny how people always feel the need to let people know that they don't understand twitter.
      -taylor

      --
      Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?