Twitter went public on Thursday, with its shares originally priced at $26 — higher than first expected. According to CNBC, executives at the company have been spending time on Wall Street and visiting other major cities to promote the forthcoming public offering. Yet, despite their efforts and the overwhelming popularity of Twitter as a social media platform, investors are skeptical.
In a poll by AP-CNBC, almost half of polled “active” investors – those active with their investments in the past year – claim Twitter is a poor investment of your money.
Because the most active Twitter users fall into the 18-29 age range (according to a 2013 study by Pew Research Center), it could be that the majority of active Twitter users are not yet established enough to invest in the stock market. As this generation gets older, this could change. However, a poll conducted by Wells Fargo has shown that out of the 1,500 22-32 year-old individuals surveyed, the majority expressed little interest in the stock market.
But this skepticism may simply reflect an overcautious public hesitant to take the investment plunge with a relatively new social network (It launched in 2006). After all, the stock opened trading at $45.10, which was 74% higher than the initial price of $26. While Facebook, which went public in May 2012, remains the most lucrative Internet technology public offering, Twitter fell only slightly behind, becoming the third largest Internet IPO.
Twitter is immensely popular among social media users – it’s the most popular social network after Facebook – yet, the question that investors must ask is whether or not this popularity is lasting. Not all social networking platforms succeed in the long run. Just as MySpace. It appears, for the future of Twitter, only time will tell if the company’s marketing strategy is sustainable.
Source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101165620