Twitter raises another $200m

Twitter has raised another $200m (€151m) to help its popular online communications service keep on growing without Wall Street’s help.

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of Silicon Valley’s best-known venture capital firms, is leading the investment. Twitter also added two successful entrepreneurs, Mike McCue and David Rosenblatt, to its board of directors.

The funding was first reported by the technology blog All Things Digital.

Twitter’s association with Kleiner Perkins is likely to add to the intrigue about the moneymaking potential of a service that each day blasts out more than 65 million short messages, or “tweets”, limited to 140 characters.

Kleiner Perkins’ past internet bets include investments in online search leader Google, now worth about $190bn (€143bn), and leading web merchant Amazon, now worth about $80bn (€60bn).

The venture capital firm obviously thinks highly of Twitter, which started in 2007. The $200m investment values Twitter at $3.7bn (€2.7bn), up from $1bn (€750m) 15 months ago when the company last raised money from venture capitalists. Some of Twitter’s previous financial backers upped their ante by joining Kleiner Perkins in the latest round.

Twitter has now raised about $360m (€271m) since its 2007 inception.

With so much cash being supplied by investors, Twitter’s management has been able to focus on hiring more workers and adding more features instead of worrying about how to make money. The company, based in San Francisco, now employs about 350 people, more than tripling its payroll since the beginning of the year.

Most of Twitter’s revenue so far has flowed from deals that have given Google, Microsoft’s Bing and other internet services better access to its messaging stream. Over the past eight months, Twitter has gradually allowed ads to appear amid its service’s chatter.