Twitter IPO 2013 On Its Way? Initial Valuation Could Be $11 Billion

Speculation is rampant about a Twitter initial public offering (IPO) in 2013.

Could the social networking company be gearing up for an initial public offering next year?

Twitter would be a popular commodity, at least at first, but the dismal IPOs of other tech firms like Facebook and Zynga last year serve as warnings.

Will Twitter go public? And should it?

"Despite murmurs that the microblogging site could file in 2013, Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has said that he's not planning to take the company public anytime soon," says Sarah Mitroff at Wired.

She gives the company "slim" chances of an IPO in 2013.

"That's probably a smart move for the company since investors are still wary of social media companies in the wake of Facebook's IPO," she said.

Indeed, Costolo did say he has no intention of going public, though that was last September. "Nothing external to the company has had any bearing on how I think about when to take Twitter public or not to," Costolo told CNBC. "We have every hope and belief that we will be a successful -- independent -- company."

Of course, the decision whether to sell is ultimately left to the board of directors.

If Twitter does go public, Forbes pegs its initial valuation at around $11 billion.

Abram Brown at Forbes said, "A rough valuation for Twitter can be established through where its shares trade in online secondary markets, though a firm figure is difficult. 'Using the secondary market for shares to mark enterprise value is a very difficult and opaque process. It is a rumor-rich and special-share-class soup," says Greencrest Capital's Max Wolff. "That said, Twitter is up since the Facebook IPO and is now valued at northward of $11 billion.'"

But other analysts think Twitter would do better as part of a larger company, like Apple, which could them mine its data for information about the shopping habits and media consumption of its users, rather than focusing on selling advertising.

"I think Apple would want to own them, not for an ad revenue stream, but for this knowledge graph they would be able to understand about their users. That's really interesting for people like Nielsen -we saw them do a deal with Twitter recently," said Eric Jackson, founder of IronFire Capital, speaking to Yahoo Finance.

"Could they do an IPO in 2013? For sure," said Jackson.

"Whether it's luck or smarts, they've figured out that their service is uniquely adapted for the mobile environment and they're having an easier time selling ads in their form factor compared to Facebook," said Jackson. "So they could do an IPO in 2013, but I don't think they should."