Twitter valued at US$3.7bn post latest fund raising

Popular micro-blogging web site Twitter has been valued at US$3.7bn after it raised US$200mn in new financing, which was led by one of the highest-profile Internet investors in Silicon Valley. 

According to one estimate, Twitter's annual revenue was currently under US$100mn.

The company was last valued at US$1bn in a funding round last year. 

Facebook, the world's No. 1 Internet social networking company, is valued at more than US$45bn in recent stock purchase transactions on the secondary market.

The San Francisco-based Twitter had raised US$160mn in four earlier funding rounds, from investors that included Spark Capital, Institutional Venture Partners and T. Rowe Price.

Twitter’s newest round was led by venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, and early investor in Internet giants such as Google, Amazon.com and others.

As part of the new funding round, Twitter has added two new board members - Flipboard CEO Mike McCue, and former Google executive David Rosenblatt.

Twitter CEO Dick Costolo said on Wednesday that the company has added over 100 million new registered accounts in the past year, and now employs over 350 people. 

The money will help Twitter expand the company, Costolo said in the company's corporate blog. 

Costolo replaced Twitter co-founder Evan Williams as CEO in October. 

Twitter had 175 million users as of September.

Twitter has been developing revenue models designed to cash in on its growing popularity among the marketers, advertisers, media professionals apart from celebrities, politicians and businesses.

The company recently unveiled “Promoted Accounts,” a service aimed at drawing users to Twitter accounts operated by advertisers.

Twitter also has sealed deals with Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to have its short messages, or tweets, appear in these companies’ search results.