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 Shares rose to $49 in mid-day trading, up 9.2 percent. Twitter has
mostly traded in the low-$40 range in recent weeks since November 7,
when shares briefly topped $50 in the hours following its highly
anticipated IPO.
Twitter on Thursday officially began allowing marketers to show
individually-tailored ads on Twitter, based on websites the user has
previously visited. The cookie-based targeted ads, as they are
known, are expected to fetch higher ad prices.
The company also said it would launch a text-only version of the
service that would be available to people with entry-level mobile
phones that cannot access the Internet.
Apple Inc announced last week it would acquire Topsy, an analytics
company that mines Twitter data, for $200 million, according to
media reports.
Although the iPhone maker withheld any information about how it
planned to integrate Topsy, analysts said the deal was served as the
latest affirmation that the flood of data produced daily on Twitter
holds value for businesses.
"There's been a lot of little stories, from targeted audiences
performing well to Topsy acquisition showing support for analytics
for this space, that have people scrambling," said Robert Peck, an
analyst at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey.
Shares slipped last week, when Twitter's post-IPO "quiet period"
lifted and five investment banks involved in the offering published
mixed reviews from their research analysts on the stock.
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But the end of the quiet period also let Twitter executives speak to
large institutional investors for the first time since the IPO, Peck
noted.
Since its IPO, Twitter, which has never turned a profit, has
polarized analysts and investors. Twitter has traded at even higher
multiples of its estimated forward revenue than competitors such as
Facebook Inc and LinkedIn Corp — which are already some of the most
richly valued companies in the technology sector.
Twitter, with a market cap approaching $25 billion, is expected to
make $1.1 billion in 2014.
Facebook Inc, Google Inc and LinkedIn Corp were also trading
slightly higher on Monday while the S&P 500 Index remained flat.
(Editing by Krista Hughes)
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