Twitter announced that it has secured a “significant,” but unspecified new round of funding led by DST Global, with additional participation from existing Twitter investors. Twitter says it will use the money to innovate, hire and invest in international expansion.
“Twitter continues to grow around the globe at a record pace,” the company says on its official blog. “Just a year ago, we delivered 65 million Tweets a day. Today, we generate over 200 million Tweets per day. One year ago, there were approximately 150,000 registered Twitter apps. Now, there are more than one million that connect to Twitter. And our team has grown from 250 people to more than 600 in the past 12 months.”
“More importantly, Twitter is where people around the globe come to instantly connect to what’s most meaningful to them,” Twitter adds. “This makes Twitter the only place in the world to get a real-time pulse on what people are thinking and doing practically anywhere.”
You used to be able to do that on Google, with a fair amount of help from Twitter, but the companies have so far failed to reach an agreement that would extend that functionality (realtime search).
As far as international expansion goes, the company did expand on a language basis today, by adding Dutch and Indonesian, making Twitter available in a total of 11 languages.
These two languages were the first to be fully translated by the Twitter community of volunteers, using the Twitter Translation Center.
Twitter also has a new office in New York:
@Twitter team welcomes #TwitterNYC with handwritten postcards: http://t.co/KkL232N
TheWhile Twitter has not said how much the new funding is, it is thought to be around $800 million.