Everyone’s going crazy as Twitter just made the S-1 filing for its IPO public. One of the standard parts of the S-1 is a letter from the CEO to shareholders, where they lay out their vision for the company.
In Twitter’s filing, however, it’s a letter from “@Twitter”. And whereas the letters from Groupon’s Andrew Mason, Zynga’s Mark Pincus, and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg all clocked in at one or two thousand words, Twitter’s letter is just 135, plus an embedded tweet.
That’s probably appropriate for a platform that was initially distinguished by the 140-character limit that it imposed on its users. It may also reflect the fact that Twitter isn’t identified with a single founder or executive the way that, say, Facebook is — none of its founders currently have a full-time role with the company (though apparently co-founders Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone and Ev Williams visited the office today). And hey, it’s not like the rest of the filing is lacking in a rundown of the company’s perspective on the risks and opportunities that it faces.
So here’s the full text:
LETTER FROM @TWITTER
Twitter was born on March 21, 2006 with just 24 characters:
We started with a simple idea: share what you’re doing, 140 characters at a time. People took that idea and strengthened it by using @names to have public conversations, #hashtags to organize movements, and Retweets to spread news around the world. Twitter represents a service shaped by the people, for the people.
The mission we serve as Twitter, Inc. is to give everyone the power to create and share ideas and information instantly without barriers. Our business and revenue will always follow that mission in ways that improve–and do not detract from–a free and global conversation.
Thank you for supporting us through your Tweets, your business, and now, your potential ownership of this service we continue to build with you.
Yours,
