Twitter IPO Filing By The Numbers: More Ads Likely

Twitter Inc., the microblogging social media company, is about to go public in its IPO. As part of the process of opening itself to public investors, Twitter's internal figures have been released to the public.

Twitter revealed earlier in September that it had begun the IPO process, taking advantage of a new law that allows companies that make less than $1 billion in annual revenue to keep their IPO documents secret until the company is ready to formally present their numbers to potential investors.

Now that Twitter has made its filing public, the company can start talking to potential investors in what is called a "road show," which, as Twitter is expected to try to make its IPO as painless as possible, will probably start as soon as Oct. 24.

Known for its 140-character limits on tweets, Twittter's IPO filing is decidedly longer than that. In fact, it's about 800 pages long. Here are the most interesting and useful highlights.

Twitter's User Base

Twitter has grown quite a lot since its inception, but the company was rumored to have a 240 million person userbase; Twitter, itself, has said it had more than 200 million active users for a while.

According to the filing, Twitter had 218 million users, according to the most recent count in June, with 100 million of those being active daily users. The total figure is up from 30 million in 2010, when Twitter's CEO Dick Costolo began directing the company, but it's smaller than expected, and (of course) much smaller than Facebook's over-a-billion users.

Twitter is unmistakably a mobile social media network. Three quarters of Twitter's user base accessed the service from mobile devices. It's also a global social network. Of the 218 million users, more than three quarters are based outside of the United States, in fast growing IT markets like Argentina, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Russia, along with Japan and France.

Twitter's Profits, Losses, and Value

As has been hinted before, like when Gawker got its hands on Twitter's private financials for 2010-2011, Twitter Inc. is not a profitable company.

In fact, it hasn't made a net profit since the company began. Twitter has been able to afford operating at a loss every year because it has raised $759 million from private investors, and still has $375 million left, as of the end of June.

The company hasn't been paying attention to profitability, though, instead working on sales and expansion. And, despite losing a net of $69 million this year - up from $49 million in losses last year - the company has been growing its revenue stream.

In 2010, the company had annual revenue of $28 million. Last year, it made $317, and the first half of 2013 showed $254 million in revenue, the most it has made in a six-month period in its history. The company plans to make upwards of a billion on its IPO. 

Eighty-seven percent of that revenue currently comes from advertising.

Market Pressure and Ads 

If you're a Twitter user, you've probably noticed that Twitter doesn't push ads very much. At least not yet.

Once owned by public investors, Twitter will feel market pressure to up its ad revenue even more. That probably means more sponsored Tweets and other advertisements in the Twitter app, along with pressure on third-party Twitter clients like HotSuite and Tweetbot to generate revenue as well.

So savor your ad-free, high signal-to-noise-ratio Twitter environment, because it will change soon.