Company Yuri Milner Digital Sky Technologies has decided to buy stake in Twitter, as reported by an anonymous source from The New York Times. According to him, the deal will involve former investors popular service – is a fund Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers (KPCB). The amount of investment of $ 400 million, and the company is valued at $ 8 billion

If we make a cursory analysis, then Twitter has all the chances to justify such large investments. Service which was launched only 5 years ago, already has 200 million registered users, of which Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, the service name is recorded in dictionaries, and all the revolutions in North Africa have been organized, with the help Twitter, and questions for press conference Obama going through an account on Twitter (# askobama), after which they read out the founder of Twitter, Jack Dorsey. What other internet company, except for Facebook, is an enviable place in society.

Before you invest in the project, investors from DST evaluate media-component of the project. There are other factors evaluation is worth investing in a project or not, which, however, recently told himself Yuri Milner, first of all, this is a great assessed value – in DST do not invest in the project less than $ 1 billion in capitalization. This fully satisfy the criteria for Twitter. DST would enter into the company back when Twitter was estimated at $ 3.7 billion, but then the deal did not materialize and the project has invested all the same «KPCB».

However, Twitter is not without problems with the business model. According to estimates eMarketer (analyst firm), last year the company generated $ 45 million Source of income – the promotion of advertising messages and accounts. Yet on Twitter profit lags far behind the same Facebook, which last year earned for its shareholders $ 2 billion, and Zynga – about $ 600 million, of which net profit of $ 90 million

However, Twitter is yet another serious flaw, as opposed to Facebook, Zynga, Yandex, LinkedIn, Apple and Google, is that all these IT-giants are controlled by the iron hand of the founding fathers with the full confidence of the board of directors, while the management of Twitter like most real leap-frog. Until 2008, the company was headed by founder Jack Dorsey, but co-founder Evan Williams who considered inconsistent with the management of Jack strategy removed him from control. After that Jack does not talk to Evan, despite the fact that they sit together on the board of directors. It was a “stab in the back,” says Jack Dorsey. Evan Ulims in late 2010, handed the laurels of the previous government investor Dick Costolo. Then again, Dorsey was offered a job – to engage in products and improve service, which has lagged behind in its development, resulting in a leapfrog. The truth behind the absence of Dorsey had to build new successful startup – payment system Square, so work on Twitter for a time.

Not only that the current board of directors of Twitter is not like a group of like-minded people, so potential investors (DST and KPCB) still can not enter into it. KPCB partner John Doerr has not let go, as he sits in Google, and Yuri Milner says that is not intended to seat the head of the companies that he wholly or partly owns. It turns out that new investors will not be able to influence the policy management and monetization of the project, as well as technological progress. By the way Twitter is so often has difficulty with the load on the server that cute whale, which appears when the server drops, had itself become a star.

Twittrt is not the most promising investment DST, but if Yuri Milner, who has hitherto impeccable track record of investor willing to invest hundreds of millions of dollars, so the prospect is, or has some hidden meaning. Or financial position is much better than this for declared. What is a young entrepreneur refuses to cash the investor, who had previously invested in Facebook, Zynga and Spotify.

And finally, do not necessarily show Twitter in the exchange, to discourage investment. After a time, you can sell the company more than it’s worth now. That Milner realized that you can earn between repeated rounds of investment, which can replace the IPO, and as long as such a principle it has not let down.