Iran’s Press TV Dodges Sanctions on YouTube

As my colleague Michael Schwirtz reported, Iran’s new foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, addressed the crisis in Syria in an English-language interview this week on Press TV, a state-owned satellite channel that exists to put Tehran’s spin on the news.

Perhaps aware that Americans are unable to see Press TV broadcasts over the air, Mr. Zarif posted a link to a YouTube video of the interview on the recently verified Twitter feed he uses to engage with citizens of Iran’s traditional enemies.

My PressTV interview https://t.co/mqmLRHyuT8

â€" Javad Zarif (@JZarif) 12 Sep 13

Readers who are interested in seeing the interview might want to act fast, though, because Press TV has been engaged in a battle of wits with YouTube in recent months over access to the video-sharing site.

In late July, shortly after the Anti-Defamation League complained to YouTube that the Iranian-owned broadcaster was using its channel as a “propaganda tool to promote a wide range of pernicious anti-Semitic conspiracy theories in English to a worldwide audience,” Press TV reported that it had lost control of its official channel and was no longer able to post new video reports there.

Two weeks later, after Press TV tried to evade the blockade by setting up a second channel, the A.D.L. complained again, calling the broadcaster’s use of YouTube a violation of American sanctions, and the Iranians again found themselves blocked.

In late August, Press TV advised users to look for its reports on another new channel, which is now also blocked.

A spokeswoman for YouTube refused to speak on the record about any specific channel but said in a statement to The Lede, “We disable accounts that violate our terms of service or community guidelines, and when we are required by law to do so.”

5 Reasons That Innovation at Twitter Might Take a Hit

When a company takes itself public, it can function like a shock to the internal system, especially at companies accustomed to operating in start-up mode. Money rushes in, some longtime employees cash out, and new pressures loom over management to increase revenue.

So Twitter, the latest high-profile I.P.O., will probably face some significant changes.

Many technology firms pledge to maintain a kind of nimble, hacker ethos after they go public. But Shai Bernstein, a professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, has conducted research that shows that rarely happens â€" and his work suggests that companies move in the opposite direction.

After a company goes public, he said, “I find there is a substantial decline in the quality of innovation.”

His 2012 study, “Does Going Public Affect Innovation?” measured the number of patents and their influence before and after their I.P.O.’s. (It had a control group of companies who planned to go public, but did not.) In an interview, Mr. Bernstein identified five theories on why his research uncovered these findings.

1. Inventive People Cash Out

For many early start-up employees, who are vital to the company’s success, an I.P.O. can be the payday they’ve been waiting for.

“Those that are responsible for the more fundamental or core innovations before the I.P.O.? These are the guys who are more likely to leave,” he said.

Whether they are going to invest in a sailboat or another start-up, the most valuable innovators who have been waiting around for a payday often see a public offering as the moment to move on.

2. Inventive People Keep Inventing, Elsewhere

Talented tech employees might leave after an I.P.O. because of the company’s culture, too. A newly public company’s focus on revenue (or ads in the case of Twitter or Facebook) can change projects, assignments and priorities. If creative minds who want to “change the world” are not thrilled at the prospect of engineering incremental improvements, they may be headed out the door, he said.

“Imagine that you have a brilliant idea,” said Mr. Bernstein. “It’s more attractive to explore that in a private setting where you are the owner, than in a public firm, where whatever ownership you had is now heavily diluted.”

“They do seem to remain entrepreneurial,” he said â€" just not at the company their innovations helped build.

3. Management Clamps Down on Risky, Creative Work

Twitter started as a side project created by developers working on a failed audio start-up, Odeo. But with new pressure to deliver on quarterly results, managers at the company may be less willing to back the kinds of hobbyist passion projects that were the very genesis of the company they are managing today.

Mr. Bernstein said that the need to show growth every quarter, in both users and revenue, may shift Twitter’s focus away from risk-taking.

“I see substantial decline in the quality of the work after the I.P.O.,” Mr. Bernstein said, with fewer influential patents and ideas.

4. Why Build Innovation When You Can Buy It?

Newly flush with capital, many companies who recently took the I.P.O. route find that instead of relying on their original innovators, buying new technologies is more effective than building them. After an I.P.O., said Mr. Bernstein, there is a significant increase in the likelihood to acquire companies.

For Twitter, which bought 10 companies in 2012, the shopping spree is likely to continue. According to Mr. Bernstein’s research, one can expect the social media network to keep buying other start-ups whose technology is superior to what it can produce in-house.

5. New Hires Arrive, with Different Priorities

More access to capital often means that newly public companies can go on a hiring binge, and many do.

“There is substantial employee turnaround,” Mr. Bernstein said of the newly public companies he studied.

But if Twitter begins bringing on a fleet of new engineering talent, they no longer have the same incentives â€" namely stock options for a future I.P.O. â€" to attract star developers as they did before. New hires will arrive, but will be less a part of “building something big,” and increasingly part of growing and maintaining someone else’s ideas.

A Caveat

As Twitter goes through this transition â€" seeing old talent leave, new talent arrive, new companies acquired and a new set of priorities driving the company â€" Mr. Bernstein cautions that while Twitter may become a less innovative company, that does not mean it will become a less valuable one. The changes that a company undergoes after a public offer may be the most efficient way for them to create more value.

Public offerings are not a bad thing, he said. They are essential to the entrepreneurial ecosystem that birthed companies like Twitter.

“If we take out the I.P.O. market,” he said, “why would venture capitalists invest in the first place?”

For Developers, a Downside to a Public Twitter

Twitter’s public offering will lead to a lot of changes, including for its investors, executives and early employees, who stand to make a lot of money.

But for the many developers who built services on top of Twitter, and helped the service become popular, the I.P.O. could mean a bleak future for their products.

In Twitter’s early days, the company had strong relationships with Web and mobile developers, who built tens of thousands of applications that made Twitter easier and more entertaining to use. It was something of a gold rush, as developers rolled out services that let people post photos and manage multiple accounts simultaneously, for example.

As Twitter’s service matured and the company began to look for ways to make money, it slowly began to shut access and resources for developers. In some cases, Twitter bought the services that were most useful to them â€" like Trendrr and Blue Fin Labs, two social media analytics firms â€" and that would make it a rounder and more robust company over all.

But many other developers watched as their businesses and products were squeezed off from Twitter’s stream of data and information until the products were no longer able to function. That noose may only tighten once the company goes public and hews to the profit demands of shareholders.

Some analysts say that Twitter’s third-party ecosystem was getting unruly. The company needed to rein it the services, they say, to streamline the experience for new users, particularly those who were unfamiliar with the service and might be confused or turned off by a poorly designed or running Twitter app.

But it was also a financial decision, especially when it came to apps that could alter how ads appeared in a Twitter stream. Twitter primarily makes money from advertising in the Twitter stream.

“They wanted to control the advertising over the long-term and limit developers who might remove ads from their apps,” said Brian Blau, an analyst with Gartner.

Joaquim Verges, a 26-year-old Android developer who now lives in London, says that his app, Falcon, an alternative way to use Twitter on a mobile device, was among those shut down as Twitter began to limit the number of users third-party apps could have.

“The big message in the last six months has been to stop using our API,” he said, referring to a toolkit that lets developers build services on top of other services. “They want to control the platform and gather all the users into their official apps.”

He thinks that Twitter’s strategy a mistake, because Twitter’s “army of independent developers” could help the company compete against its biggest rivals, Facebook and Google, by coming up with innovative and interesting services. Last year, Twitter said there were 1.5 million apps created on top of the platform.

“It’s really disappointing because they are missing a big opportunity,” he said. “It’s an advantage against their competitors.”

Mr. Verges said that he has reached Twitter’s cap of 100,000 users for his Twitter client, though he plans to keep it running. He said Twitter’s restrictions haven’t diminished his respect or admiration for the company, and he plans to develop a new Twitter application that will compliment the service, instead of trying to replace it. But there’s “no guarantee it won’t get shut down,” he said.

“They don’t really communicate with us,” he said. “I’m just working it anyway.”

Mr. Verges recently accepted a job at a stealth start-up in Silicon Valley called UpThere, and he said he’s keeping an eye on what Twitter does next.

There’s always a chance, he said, that the I.P.O. could revive the developer heyday. “They money they get from the IPO they could let them take a risk with indie developers” again, he said.

Reports Point to a Massacre in Syria With Conventional Weapons

While the debate over Syria’s use of chemical weapons continues to be the focus of international diplomacy, a Human Rights Watch report released on Friday concluded that forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, armed with just guns and knives, “executed at least 248 people in the towns of al-Bayda and Baniyas on May 2 and 3,” many of them women and children.

The 78-page report â€" based on 20 witness accounts and a forensic examination of video apparently recorded by participants in the deadly crackdown on the rebellious towns and terrified observers in the hills nearby as the killing unfolded â€" was published the same day as a searing video report based on the same evidence was broadcast and posted online by Channel 4 News in Britain.

A Channel 4 News video report, which contains graphic images, presents witness accounts and footage to document claims that Syrian security forces massacred civilians in the towns of al-Bayda and Baniyas in May.

Taken together, the two reports make a convincing case that Syrian government forces were responsible for a massacre with conventional weapons that passed almost unnoticed months before the killings with poison gas outside Damascus prompted the United States to threaten military retaliation. (As The Lede noted at the time, the BBC interviewed survivors of the massacre in May, but the horrors they described initially failed to stand out as the pace of killing escalated in Syria.)

The idea that the American government would draw a “red line” to prohibit the further slaughter of Syrians with chemical weapons, but permit the summary execution of civilians to go on unchecked, has astonished Syrian activists, international rights workers and journalists, like the BBC correspondent Paul Danahar.

It seems US policy on #Syria is: ‘if all goes to plan the regime will stop killing with gas.’ The plan doesn’t involve stopping the killings

â€" Paul Danahar (@pdanahar) 13 Sep 13

Indeed, three congressional sources told Reuters on Thursday that support for President Obama’s plan to strike Syria had waned after administration officials admitted in private that some of the 1,429 dead bodies counted by analysts in video of the victims posted online might have been killed “by the conventional bombing that followed the release of sarin gas in suburban Damascus neighborhoods.”

As James Brabazon, the producer of the Channel 4 News report, explains on the broadcaster’s Web site, al-Bayda was a mainly Sunni Muslim village that embraced the uprising against President Assad soon after it started in March, 2011, despite being surrounded by pro-government towns and villages.

The village attracted little notice until May, 2011, when opposition activists obtained shocking video recorded by a pro-government militiaman during a security crackdown there that showed protesters being kicked, beaten and stomped on in al-Bayda’s main square.

Video posted online by Syrian opposition activists showed protesters being abused in the village of al-Bayda in May, 2011.

Later that month, as The Lede reported, state-controlled television channels attempted to discredit that footage, claiming that it was either staged to undermine the government or filmed in Iraq and showed abuses by American soldiers and Kurdish peshmerga fighters. That effort at damage control was undermined, however, when activists responded by releasing video of one of the men shown being abused in the footage, a Bayda resident named Ahmad Bayasi, standing in the same location and holding up his Syrian identity card.

As Channel 4 News reported later in 2011, Mr. Bayasi was subsequently arrested and appeared on state television making what looked like a forced statement that he had never been abused.

According to the Human Rights Watch report, “at least 9 men, 3 women and 14 children” from the extended Bayasi family were executed in al-Bayda during the raid by security forces on May 2 of this year.

Reports Point to a Massacre in Syria With Conventional Weapons

While the debate over Syria’s use of chemical weapons continues to be the focus of international diplomacy, a Human Rights Watch report released on Friday concluded that forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad, armed with just guns and knives, “executed at least 248 people in the towns of al-Bayda and Baniyas on May 2 and 3,” many of them women and children.

The 78-page report â€" based on 20 witness accounts and a forensic examination of video apparently recorded by participants in the deadly crackdown on the rebellious towns and terrified observers in the hills nearby as the killing unfolded â€" was published the same day as a searing video report based on the same evidence was broadcast and posted online by Channel 4 News in Britain.

A Channel 4 News video report, which contains graphic images, presents witness accounts and footage to document claims that Syrian security forces massacred civilians in the towns of al-Bayda and Baniyas in May.

Taken together, the two reports make a convincing case that Syrian government forces were responsible for a massacre with conventional weapons that passed almost unnoticed months before the killings with poison gas outside Damascus prompted the United States to threaten military retaliation. (As The Lede noted at the time, the BBC interviewed survivors of the massacre in May, but the horrors they described initially failed to stand out as the pace of killing escalated in Syria.)

The idea that the American government would draw a “red line” to prohibit the further slaughter of Syrians with chemical weapons, but permit the summary execution of civilians to go on unchecked, has astonished Syrian activists, international rights workers and journalists, like the BBC correspondent Paul Danahar.

It seems US policy on #Syria is: ‘if all goes to plan the regime will stop killing with gas.’ The plan doesn’t involve stopping the killings

â€" Paul Danahar (@pdanahar) 13 Sep 13

Indeed, three congressional sources told Reuters on Thursday that support for President Obama’s plan to strike Syria had waned after administration officials admitted in private that some of the 1,429 dead bodies counted by analysts in video of the victims posted online might have been killed “by the conventional bombing that followed the release of sarin gas in suburban Damascus neighborhoods.”

As James Brabazon, the producer of the Channel 4 News report, explains on the broadcaster’s Web site, al-Bayda was a mainly Sunni Muslim village that embraced the uprising against President Assad soon after it started in March, 2011, despite being surrounded by pro-government towns and villages.

The village attracted little notice until May, 2011, when opposition activists obtained shocking video recorded by a pro-government militiaman during a security crackdown there that showed protesters being kicked, beaten and stomped on in al-Bayda’s main square.

Video posted online by Syrian opposition activists showed protesters being abused in the village of al-Bayda in May, 2011.

Later that month, as The Lede reported, state-controlled television channels attempted to discredit that footage, claiming that it was either staged to undermine the government or filmed in Iraq and showed abuses by American soldiers and Kurdish peshmerga fighters. That effort at damage control was undermined, however, when activists responded by releasing video of one of the men shown being abused in the footage, a Bayda resident named Ahmad Bayasi, standing in the same location and holding up his Syrian identity card.

As Channel 4 News reported later in 2011, Mr. Bayasi was subsequently arrested and appeared on state television making what looked like a forced statement that he had never been abused.

According to the Human Rights Watch report, “at least 9 men, 3 women and 14 children” from the extended Bayasi family were executed in al-Bayda during the raid by security forces on May 2 of this year.

Today’s Scuttlebot: Glass App Dazzles, and a Hacker Target Speaks Out

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Today’s Scuttlebot: Glass App Dazzles, and a Hacker Target Speaks Out

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Behind Microsoft Deal, the Specter of a Nokia Android Phone

SEATTLE â€" Before Microsoft reached a deal to buy Nokia’s phone business, there was a possibility that Nokia could have switched its smartphones to Google’s Android operating system sometime after late 2014.

And now, it is clear that a Nokia Android phone was more than a possibility. It was real.

A team within Nokia had Android up and running on the company’s Lumia handsets well before Microsoft and Nokia began negotiating Microsoft’s $7.2 billion acquisition of Nokia’s mobile phone and services business, according to two people briefed on the effort who declined to be identified because the project was confidential. Microsoft executives were aware of the existence of the project, these people said.

Another person said the idea of Nokia using Android wasn’t a part of Microsoft’s discussions with the company about an acquisition, even though that was widely recognized as a possibility.

On one level, Nokia’s Android effort is not shocking. Companies often have “plan Bs” in the works in case they need to change course on strategy or want to help negotiate better terms with partners. Getting Android to run on Nokia’s hardware was not a Herculean engineering effort, according to the people familiar with the project.

Still, a functioning Nokia Android phone could have served as a powerful prop in Nokia’s dealings with Microsoft, a tangible reminder that Nokia could move away from Microsoft’s Windows Phone software and use the Android operating system, which powers more than three out of every four smartphones sold globally.

Susan Sheehan, a spokeswoman for Nokia, declined to comment, as did Frank Shaw, a Microsoft spokesman.

Nokia reached a deal with Microsoft in 2011 to use Windows Phone on its smartphones, but Nokia had an option to exit that partnership at the end of 2014. Unraveling that deal would have been painful for both parties. It would have been devastating to Microsoft’s mobile phone efforts since Nokia accounts for more than 80 percent of the Windows Phone handsets sold. For Nokia, changing such an important ingredient in its products would have been a costly setback too.

Nokia has faced criticism that it made the wrong decision in choosing Windows Phone over Android several years ago. Nokia’s share of the smartphone market fell to 3 percent during the first half of 2013, from 32.8 percent in 2010.

There is no telling for sure whether Nokia would have been better off with Android over that time. It is possible the design of the operating system and greater abundance of Android apps might have put Nokia in a better spot.

The current status of Nokia’s Android project is unclear. Presumably, after Microsoft completes its acquisition of Nokia’s phone business early next year, there won’t be much future for it.

Behind Microsoft Deal, the Specter of a Nokia Android Phone

SEATTLE â€" Before Microsoft reached a deal to buy Nokia’s phone business, there was a possibility that Nokia could have switched its smartphones to Google’s Android operating system sometime after late 2014.

And now, it is clear that a Nokia Android phone was more than a possibility. It was real.

A team within Nokia had Android up and running on the company’s Lumia handsets well before Microsoft and Nokia began negotiating Microsoft’s $7.2 billion acquisition of Nokia’s mobile phone and services business, according to two people briefed on the effort who declined to be identified because the project was confidential. Microsoft executives were aware of the existence of the project, these people said.

Another person said the idea of Nokia using Android wasn’t a part of Microsoft’s discussions with the company about an acquisition, even though that was widely recognized as a possibility.

On one level, Nokia’s Android effort is not shocking. Companies often have “plan Bs” in the works in case they need to change course on strategy or want to help negotiate better terms with partners. Getting Android to run on Nokia’s hardware was not a Herculean engineering effort, according to the people familiar with the project.

Still, a functioning Nokia Android phone could have served as a powerful prop in Nokia’s dealings with Microsoft, a tangible reminder that Nokia could move away from Microsoft’s Windows Phone software and use the Android operating system, which powers more than three out of every four smartphones sold globally.

Susan Sheehan, a spokeswoman for Nokia, declined to comment, as did Frank Shaw, a Microsoft spokesman.

Nokia reached a deal with Microsoft in 2011 to use Windows Phone on its smartphones, but Nokia had an option to exit that partnership at the end of 2014. Unraveling that deal would have been painful for both parties. It would have been devastating to Microsoft’s mobile phone efforts since Nokia accounts for more than 80 percent of the Windows Phone handsets sold. For Nokia, changing such an important ingredient in its products would have been a costly setback too.

Nokia has faced criticism that it made the wrong decision in choosing Windows Phone over Android several years ago. Nokia’s share of the smartphone market fell to 3 percent during the first half of 2013, from 32.8 percent in 2010.

There is no telling for sure whether Nokia would have been better off with Android over that time. It is possible the design of the operating system and greater abundance of Android apps might have put Nokia in a better spot.

The current status of Nokia’s Android project is unclear. Presumably, after Microsoft completes its acquisition of Nokia’s phone business early next year, there won’t be much future for it.

Twitter vs. Facebook: A Tale of Two Sites

All eyes are on Twitter as the company prepares for a highly anticipated initial public offering of stock. Twitter’s announcement on Thursday that the company had filed paperwork with regulators to eventually sell shares  immediately had analysts and potential shareholders wondering how the company would fare after Facebook’s public offering last year, which was turbulent, to say the least.

But how alike are the two social networks? Here’s a quick comparison.

Back Story: Twitter was created as a side project in 2006 as a way to share short, succinct messages with a small group of friends. Facebook, as has been told many times, got its start in a Harvard dorm room in 2004. It initially aimed to let people create personal profiles to share photos and messages with a wide network of friends.

Purpose: Twitter functions as a real-time news, entertainment and information network, tapping into the ideas and preoccupations of people who live online and the events that affect them. Facebook, on the other hand, primarily functions as the yellow pages for the Internet.

Network: Twitter has more than 200 million monthly active users, according to memos shared with staff members. Facebook has more than a billion.

Finances: By its own estimates, Twitter was profitable in December of last year and generated more than $100 million in revenue in the final quarter of 2012, according to numbers in an e-mail shared among members of its staff. These numbers could not be independently verified. Twitter is expected to post around $600 million in revenue this year and close to $1 billion next year, according to internal projections and estimates by the research firm eMarketer. Facebook reported that it generated $1.26 billion in revenue in 2012.

Revenue Sources: Both Twitter and Facebook rely heavily on a variety of advertising strategies, and mobile advertising in particular. Facebook, however, also makes money from games and other apps built on top of its platform, and it is  expected to introduce ads soon on Instagram, the company’s photo app.

Secret Weapon: This year, Twitter bought Vine, a video-sharing app, and quickly integrated it into the company. The service, which lets people craft and share six-second videos, was an immediate hit and has attracted 40 million users, according to Twitter. Last year, Facebook bought Instagram, a popular photo-sharing application, and it says the service has 150 million users. Instagram recently introduced a feature that lets its users upload videos, in addition to photos. The company said that five million videos were uploaded in the first 24 hours the feature was available.

Twitter’s Magic Recs Experiment Personalizes What You Follow

A few months ago, a mysterious account called “Magic Recs” appeared on Twitter.

Magic Recs promises to deliver “instant, personalized recommendations for users and content via direct message.” Its premise is simple: Twitter users that follow it receive occasional direct messages that highlight new accounts that people in your Twitter network have recently started following.

For example, Magic Recs recently sent a message alerting me that several of my friends on Twitter were now following Cabinet, the White House’s Twitter account for its Office of Cabinet Affairs. A few days before that, it let me know that a handful of people had followed Upworthy Spoiler, a parody account of the news aggregation Web site, Upworthy.

It also often flags messages posted to Twitter that are attracting the attention of people in your network. It is a charmingly low-tech feeling discovery tool that singles out tweets and Twitter accounts that are rising in popularity for one reason or another.

It is an official Twitter experiment, but not much more is known than that. Several executives at the company including Dick Costolo, the chief executive of the company, have confirmed and referenced the account through tweets of their own on Twitter. Carolyn Penner, a spokeswoman for Twitter, declined to comment on the record about the account.

It’s possible the account is testing its recommendation algorithms or whether or not people mind being targeted via direct message â€" something that could have broader implications down the line for marketing, perhaps.

In a way, it offers a glimpse of Twitter’s biggest strength, one that it will certainly be playing up to investors during its forthcoming I.P.O. â€" the service’s ability to track and analyze the pulse of the Internet, tracking and identifying what people are excited about or fussing over at any given moment. But so far, for most of its users, its a refreshing new way to discover interesting new Twitter accounts and tweets on the site, beyond its current features.

Twitter’s core service, which started out as a way to post short bursts of text, is slowly but surely evolving into a media-rich and never-ending stream of information and entertainment that includes short videos, photographs and advertisements. It is impressive and it is powerful but it is also overwhelming and tiresome.

As much as Twitter’s newer versions reveal a complex timeline of the thoughts, insights, jokes and news events occupying through attention of the Web at any given moment, the sheer volume of content has made it hard to single out items of interest.

Twitter has tried to surface new ideas on the site, using trending topic, hashtags and people suggestions to organize its content, as well as a feature called “Discover” that tries to give you an overview of current events on Twitter, based on what is trending around the world and in your network.

The company bought TweetDeck, a popular Twitter client, which lets people easily keep track of certain accounts and topics on the site. But none are enough to help manage the endless stream of content that Twitter users, especially their most loyal ones, are expected to manage at any given moment.

The Magic Recs account is still relatively small â€" roughly 11,000 people are following it â€" giving little indication of whether or not its something Twitter users like or want to use. But for now, Magic Recs is a clever twist on a solution to one of Twitter’s content dilemmas and it will be interesting to see what, if anything, the company does with it next.

Daily Report: Twitter Announces Intention to Sell Shares

Twitter, which began as a side project in a small but failing start-up seven years ago and grew into one of the world’s largest platforms for public conversation, is about to take its biggest step yet into maturity: selling stock to the public, Vindu Goel, Nick Bilton and David Geiles report.

The company announced on Thursday â€" in a tweet, one of the 140-character messages that are the backbone of the service â€" that it had filed paperwork with regulators to eventually sell shares in an initial public offering. However, it earlier filed the documents confidentially under a special provision of securities law that allows a company with less than $1 billion in annual revenue to keep its financial data secret until it begins actively marketing its stock to investors.

Twitter’s caution follows the disastrous I.P.O. of its archrival, Facebook. In May 2012, Facebook sold $16 billion in stock to investors, only to see its share price sliced in half in the ensuing months as shareholders worried that the company could not make money from its billion users.

But investors have recently become enamored of all things social and mobile, and have become particularly enchanted by the fast growth of mobile advertising revenue at social networking companies. Facebook’s shares hit a record high this week and ended Thursday at $44.75, well above the $38 I.P.O. price. LinkedIn, the business-oriented social network, is trading at nosebleed levels, even after selling another $1 billion in stock to investors in a secondary offering.

This is an opportune time for Twitter to join their ranks. Its service is considered well suited for mobile phones, with its core tweets resembling simple text messages, and it has been rapidly growing both in global users and in its advertising offerings. The microblogging service already has well above 200 million active users and is fast approaching 300 million, according to memos shared with staff members.

By its own estimates, Twitter was profitable in December of last year and generated more than $100 million in revenue in the final quarter of 2012, according to numbers in an e-mail shared among staff. These numbers could not be independently verified. But it has not been consistently profitable in 2013 because it has reinvested money into acquisitions, said people with knowledge of Twitter’s financials who declined to be named.

Today’s Scuttlebot: Hacking for Uncle Sam, and Making Cellphones in the U.S.

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