Shares in Twitter surged on its stock market debut yesterday as investors buying into this year’s most anticipated technology flotation valued the company at more than $30bn.
At least two of the company’s co-founders – who started Twitter almost by accident in 2006 – are now billionaires. Evan Williams, who invested the original capital, now has a stake worth $3.2bn while Jack Dorsey has a stake of $1.3bn.
The stock shot up 74 per cent on the open to $45.10 and hit $50 at one point – almost double its $26 offer price. At that price, Twitter was more valuable than heavyweights such as Time Warner and Yahoo. Twitter had a more successful debut than Facebook, which suffered from trading glitches on the Nasdaq; its shares rose just 0.6 per cent on the opening day before falling steadily for the next few months. LinkedIn almost doubled in value on its first day of trading in 2011.