Another year, another tantalizing initial public offering of a hot social media dynamo. Are you ready for another potential wild ride?
It sure looks tempting. Just think of what you could do with a windfall the size of Texas! All you have to do is invest in the upcoming IPO of Twitter.
Of course, it isn't that simple. When it comes to investing, remember the first rule of the stock market: If an investment looks like it might be too good to be true, that's because it usually is.
Mind you, Twitter is a highly respected social-media institution — that's right, I said it is an institution. Listen, in Silicon Valley, if a company has been in business longer than Barack, Michelle, and the girls have lived at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., it clearly has achieved the longevity to be called by that kind of lofty description.
Whither, Twitter and your money? Wall Street is pressing the case that the Twitter IPO will be a biggie and a lucrative one, at that, for everyone who is lucky enough to jump in while the water is still warm.
After all, social media is where it's at today — and Twitter is a poster child of the category, widely used and appreciated (except, of course, during one of those nettlesome, occasional Twitter blackouts).
Meanwhile, this chatter is similar to the rhetoric that investment bankers proclaimed in the buildup to the May 18, 2012, IPO of Facebook. That event was star-crossed on day one, what with technical glitches affecting the trading at the Nasdaq. The FB stock initially plunged, before regaining its footing. Any investor who had a cast-iron stomach, and stuck out all of the hard times, earned every dollar of profits.
Who's to say that a spanking new Twitter shareholder won't have a similar scary experience? Nobody knows.
Perhaps, just perhaps, the stock may take off on its inaugural trading day and never look back. Then you could buy that yacht you've always had your eye on.
Jon Friedman writes the Media Matrix blog for Indiewire.com. He is also the author of "Forget About Today: Bob Dylan's Genius for (Re)Invention, Shunning the Naysayers, and Creating a Personal Revolution." Read more reports from Jon Friedman — Click Here Now.
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