Twitter has 'no plans' to sell or go public

Twitter, which has fended off several buyers, intends to remain an independent company and is not considering going public at the moment, chief executive Dick Costolo said.

"My sincere hope is for Twitter to be a successful independent company," Costolo said at a conference organized by technology blog AllThingsD.com on the sidelines of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

"We've accomplished one percent of what we've set out to do and we have all this crazy potential," he said of the micro-blogging service which has attracted more than 175 millions users since it launched in 2006.

Asked about a potential initial public offering, Costolo said "I just don't think about it."

"We'll get to a point, I'm sure, when we'll have to start considering that," said Costolo who built and sold two companies, notably Feedburner, acquired by Google, before joining Twitter. "We're just not there yet."

A potential IPO by Twitter comes as another privately held social networking giant, Facebook, may be forced to go public next year because of an increase in the number of employees and investors holding shares in the company.

Costolo said for the moment Twitter's goal is to be present on more devices and platforms.

He said that an advertising program implemented last year that involves paid for "promoted tweets" was working "fantastically well."

"A couple of promoted tweets are in the top 10 promoted tweets of all time," he said. "It's a big enough business for us to be an independent company."

Twitter last month received an injection of $200 million in funding from investors to help fuel its growth, reportedly giving the San Francisco-based company a valuation of $3.7 billion.

"Our business plan is to continue to raise money," Costolo joked.

(c) 2011 AFP