Twitter Announces It’s Going Public

We’ve confidentially submitted an S-1 to the SEC for a planned IPO. This Tweet does not constitute an offer of any securities for sale.
— Twitter (@twitter) September 12, 2013

Twitter announced Thursday that it's going public, fittingly revealing the long-expected news via tweet, saying it had filed confidential documents for an initial public offering of stock.

Twitter filed sealed documents for the IPO, taking advantage of federal legislation passed last year that lets companies with less than $1 billion in revenue do so.

That will likely help Twitter avoid the media hype that surrounded the IPOs of other big-name social networking companies, including Facebook, which went public last year.

Research firm eMarketer as estimating that Twitter will make $582.8 million in ad revenue this year, up from $288.3 million in 2012.