The money continues to fly at the Internet’s darlings. Twitter announced on its blog today that it has received “a significant round of funding led by the venture firm DST Global, with the participation of several of our existing investors.”
The amount and the conditions of the deal have not been specified, but a report in early July by the New York Times said Twitter was in the process of negotiating a $400 million round that valued the company at $8 billion. Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers were said to be participating then as well. Later that month, the number was thought to be closer to $800 million.
DST Global is the Russian-based firm headed by billionaire Yuri Milner that has also invested in companies like Groupon, Zynga and Facebook (and slowed the need for a rush to an IPO).
The blog post opens with “Just a year ago, we delivered 65 million Tweets a day. Today, we generate over 200 million Tweets per day.” But despite the growth and efforts like Promoted Tweets, Trending Topics and The Quick Bar (or “Dick Bar” as it became known before it was done away with), the San Francisco-based company has still battled questions about its cash-flow stability. A report in March that 50 percent of all tweets were generated by less than one percent of users caused some concern about who and how people are really using the micro-blogging service.
Twitter has also just announced opening a New York City office.