July 27th, 2007
Twitter lands VC funding
Twitter has landed an undisclosed amount of venture funding from Union Square Ventures and now it can proceed with its to-do list: Grab more users, develop its platform and find a business model.
That last point is likely to get some attention today, but a snazzy business model isn’t required–at least on the first round of funding. Twitter has potential and needs some dough to figure out how to reach it. Apparently, Union Square Ventures, Charles River Ventures and a who’s who list of angel investors will help Twitter figure things out.
Saying Twitter doesn’t need a profit making scheme yet falls into the “I can’t believe I’m writing this” department, but what Paul Kedrosky says about not worrying about business models early on makes a lot of sense.
Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures says “after Facebook, I think Twitter is the most interesting API that people are building to these days.” He acknowledges Twitter doesn’t have a business model. But then again Delicious didn’t either and that worked out pretty well.
Wilson says the money will go toward making Twitter “a better, more reliable and robust service. That’s what the focus needs to be right now. We’ll have plenty of time to figure out the business model and there are many options to choose from.”
Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and Editorial Director of ZDNet sister site TechRepublic. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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