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"Perhaps the most surprising sentence in Twitter's IPO documents Thursday \u2014 and the most troubling news for fans of the social media service \u2014 came on page 23 of its S-1 filing.\n\"We have incurred significant operating losses in the past,\" the company said, \"and we may not be able to achieve or subsequently maintain profitability.\"\nTranslation: Twitter hasn't made a dime. And there's no guarantee it will in the future.\nSee also: Twitter Files for $1 Billion IPO\nThe company lost $67 million in the first half of 2013, the filing revealed, and it has an accumulated deficit of $418.6 million. That total shortfall is larger than its revenue last year, $316 million, itself a smaller number than most analysts were expecting.\nThe widespread assumption when Twitter announced it was going to go public was that it was making something on the order of $600 to $800 million a year. It ain't there yet: 2013 revenue should be around $500 million.\nIt's encouraging that the first six months of 2013 saw twice the revenue numbers of the first half of 2012. But the losses are increasing too; the company had an $80 million shortfall in 2012, and is probably hitting that amount of loss in 2013 \u2014 well, right about now.\nIt's All About the Acquisitions\nSo what's going on? Investment, of course. Twitter is hiring rapidly, expanding its offices, and most expensively, snapping up companies. For instance, its acquisition of the social TV service Bluefin back in February? That cost $67.3 million.\nTwitter would have been in the black this year to date without that one purchase, to the tune of $300,000. And if it hadn't paid $38.2 million for coding company Crashlytics in January, its profits would have looked even healthier.\nBut of course Twitter gets a ton of value out of each acquisition, and the price is lower when the company is younger (Crashlytics was a mere year old). We're not saying Twitter shouldn't have bought them; just that the spending spree CEO Dick Costolo has been on is obscuring its profit potential for the moment.\nThe encouraging news for investors is how much of Twitter's ad revenue comes from mobile users, which is where the real growth potential is. Some 65% of income is derived from Twitter users checking their smartphones and tablets. For Facebook, that number is a mere 41% (and was virtually zero at the time of its IPO).\nSo yes, this isn't the healthiest balance sheet to be heading into a public sale with. Essentially, Costolo is saying: trust me. This ship is headed for treasure. It has already found some, but it is also taking on a lot of new crewmates. Fund the expedition some more, and we'll discover doubloons beyond your dreams.\nImage: Mashable, Christina Ascani\n\n\nTop 10 Funny YouTube Videos About Twitter\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\njake-fogelnest\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nandy-borowitz\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nbill-corbett\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n1. Twitter Movie Trailer\nRated Awesome imagines what \"The Social Network\" trailer would look like if its subject was Twitter. \"The Twit Network\" is the amusing result. #turtle. \n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n2. Celebritweets Theater - Taylor Swift\nPure comedy gold is created at the exact place where celebs meet Twitter. Celebritweets makes the most of these moments, taking a tweet and animating its back story. Here, Taylor Swift's tweet about deer and road safety gets lambasted.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n3. Twitter 101 \nThis classic clip from the YouTube vaults (well, 2006) shows Biz Stone explaining the then fledgling (and still known as \"twttr\") service with its SMS-based concept. How times have changed...\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n4. Twatif? - \"The Office\"\nThis clip imagines the consequences of being restricted to 140 characters in real life. Set in \"The Office,\" be prepared for some racy double entendres.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n5. Josh Groban Sings Kanye West Tweets\nAh, Kanye. You've been a constant source of entertainment since you took up Twitter. With kids and grandma already having had a go at reading West's tweets aloud, here, as seen on Jimmy Kimmel Live, Josh Groban sings the hip hop star's tweets. Groban somehow manages to make them sound even more ridiculous than they already are.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n6. Twitter Cops\nIf only there was such a task force as the \"Twitter Cops,\" our streams would be a little less mundane.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n7. Tweet It\nThe Pantless Knights mix up iPhones, iPads, hipsters, Michael Jackson and Twitter to create a techie-tribute music video to top them all.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n8. Twitter in Real Life\nMicro-blogging hits the streets in \"Twitter in Real Life.\" We wonder how many of our tweets we'd actually hit \"send\" on if we were first forced to read them aloud.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n9. Twouble with Twitter \n\nThis hit animation sees a Twitter-shy, reluctant twenty-something taken up into the Twitterspere where he meets some familiar characters.\nNote: Due to Current's copyright restrictions this video may not play in your country.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n10. Flutter: The New Twitter\nYou're not still using Twitter are you? That's so 2010...\n\n\n\n\n\n\n"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2013/10/03/twitter-losing-money/>