Twitter and Facebook To Become World’s Richest Companies

The founders of Twitter, a social network, have never given a precise answer to the question of their profit expectations. However, a hacker managed to access the email account of an administrative employee at Twitter last month to discover the information about the financial position of the company.

As it turned out, Twitter was planning to make $140 million in 2010 vs. the current expectations of $4.4 million of profit in 2009. The administration of the network attempted to claim that the information was outdated. However, the information did not appear out of nowhere.

Twitter has at least 23 million users all over the world. The number of users of other social networks has been growing steadily too. Facebook, one of the world’s largest networks, and MySpace, owned by News Corporation, have 250 million users in comparison with 100 million as of August 2008.

The number of people using the Internet will grow from the current amount of 1.5 billion to 2.2 billion by 2013. That said, the profits of the social networks will continue to grow.

Marc Andreessen, a well-known person at Silicon Valley who has his share at both Facebook and Twitter, believes that Facebook’s income will reach $1 billion in about five years in comparison with $500 million, which the company made this year.

A number of Russian investors have recently decided to acquire Facebook’s shares too. There are entrepreneurs who prefer to invest in the companies which develop software for social networks.