Twitter prices IPO at $26 per share

Social media giant Twitter Inc. has priced its initial public offering (IPO) at 26 US dollars per share, the company said late Wednesday. "We've priced our initial public offering of 70,000,000 shares of our common stock at a price to the public of 26 dollars per share," Twitter said in a statement. Under the price, the company will raise 1.82 billion dollars. The announced price was above the expected range of 23 dollars to 25 dollars a share, indicating a strong investor demand for its stocks. In addition, the company has granted the underwriters a 30-day option to purchase up to 10.5 million additional shares of common stock. Twitter is expected to start trading on the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday under the ticker symbol of "TWTR." Founded in March 2006 and headquartered in San Francisco, California, Twitter's IPO will be the biggest U.S. technology IPO since Facebook's debut in May 2012. Twitter is a global platform for public self-expression and conversation in real time. Its platform is unique in its simplicity: Tweets are limited to 140 characters of text.