Twitter cofounder Biz Stone told a conference in Oxford today "we are definitely not interested in selling the company."
He didn't sound too enthusiastic about an IPO, either:
"We want to build our own company that will last for a long time. If an IPO's the way to do that, then sure. But if there is some other way then that would be great too. Maybe some other new way will emerge."
Biz has time to be patient.
Sure, Twitter has VCs who want a return on their investment, so it needs to provide them some kind of liquidity at some point. But that's a long ways off.
Look at Facebook. It's six years old and you don't hear Accel complaining.
Our view is that Twitter will get sold -- probably to Google (especially if the upcoming Twitter-Google search deal goes well). An IPO is possible, but Twitter's ads product would really have to take off. The public markets don't have much appetite for Web startups with huge audiences and little revenues anymore.
