Saudi Prince Invests in Twitter

Alwaleed bin Talal, a Saudi Prince and a billion dollar businessman has invested $300 million in microblogging website Twitter. He is a nephew of Saudi King Abdullah and heads Kingdom Holding Company which is the largest company in Saudi Arabia. According to some media reports, the prince wanted to expand his multi-billion dollar business with the help of social media and thus invested in Twitter which has more than 100 million active users and generates more than 250 million dollar micro blogs called ‘Tweets’ per day.

From what we can see, this is plainly an act of expansion of business. Twitter has recently been funded heavily by investors throughout the globe, especially from a firm based in Russia. Twitter has said earlier this year that it is expecting to raise more than $800 million dollars this year. And it seems that Twitter has actually raised a lot more than that amount.

San Fransisco based Twitter has a large user base but still is pretty much behind Facebook in the terms of total users. Facebook has more than 750 million users and is a fan favorite in the terms of venture capitalism. A lot of talk is going amidst the investors about the possibility of Facebook launching an IPO but still the social networking giant has not cleared its stand on this topic. It is expected that Facebook will surpass Google and will emerge as a big player when it enters stock market.

Twitter has not released any official statement about the investment from Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, but the Kingdom Holding Company, which is headed by prince is advertising this news on its website.

This deal can be beneficial for both Twitter and Kingdom Holding Company as both can use each other’s resources for achieving their respective goals. Twitter can use the money invested by Prince to expand its network and the Prince can use the power of social media to expand his business.