Twitter's funding boost from Union Square Ventures

Link: Twitter Blog

First, Twitter was a fun side project, then it was cared for lovingly at Obvious until it was time to form Twitter, Inc. Today, we’re excited to announce an important moment for Twitter. We’ve raised funding from our friends in New York City at Union Square Ventures.

I’m delighted for the team at Twitter. Just before the weekend, they announced another round of funding, this time led by Fred and Co at Union Square Ventures. Wherever Union Square are to be seen, it’s worthwhile keeping an eye.

Marc Andreessen, Dick Costolo, Ron Conway, and Naval Ravikant also popped along with some investment as well as Charles River Ventures.

Why fund Twitter when, as many have commented, there’s no obvious business model? Well, first Fred points out that he reckons, after Facebook, Twitter is the second most interesting facebook that people are building for. Second, here’s what they said about their investment in Delicious (before it went balistic):

The question everyone asks is “What is the business model?” To be completely and totally honest, we don’t yet know.

Here’s how Union Square are thinking of Twitter:

If you think about it, Twitter extends short messaging (SMS) style communications to the web and does it in an open way that anyone can build on top of it. I think we’ve only begun to see the kinds of things that can be built on top of a messaging system like this.

As one of the biggest and most public SMS applications on the planet, it’s going to be fun to see what’s next for Twitter.