Twitter has amassed a fortune with 140-character micro-blogging and now sources close to the company say it is on pace to reach $1 billion in sales by 2014.
Sources tell Blo0mberg that the social networking giant has outstripped the estimates of outside investors in forecasting its own earnings potential over the next several years, nearly doubling those estimates. If the report is true it could mean that Twitter’s own advertising model is finding considerable success.
The company’s estimates are based on current advertising demand and the fact that marketers have reported being happy with the results they have received from their small, medium and large scale advertising efforts via the social network.
The move towards a billion annual dollars is a remarkable feat when we consider that Twitter only rolled out its ad platform in 2010 and only began offering a self-service advertising program for small businesses in early 2012.
In order to survive and grow Twitter desperately needs to grow its ad business which accounts for almost 90 percent of its revenue and which generated $139.5 million in ad revenue for the social network in 2011.
In comparison Twitter will be eight years old when it surpasses the $1 billion mark, a milestone that Facebook reached in six years and Google accomplished in just five years.
The future success of the Twitter ad platform will likely be based on upcoming changes the company plans to roll out for user quality. In January 2012 Twitter acquired malware and spam protection firm Dasient in an attempt to block Twitter spam, an attempt that so far has left my own direct message section still full of endless spam messages.
