Trick or treat.  Will the new stock offering of the giant thing we all know as Twitter be a trick or a treat to our stock portfolios?  Do you dare to take the plunge?  Yes, buying new stocks can be a horror but this one just might be a good thing.  It at lease has name recognition if nothing else.  What the heck is Twitter anyway and who needs it?  That is what they said about Facebook too at one time.

I kinda knew this Twitter thing just might turn into something big someday when I wrote here on this blog back on April 9,2013 about the Twitter guy creator Jack Dorsey.  Here is some background about the guy taken from the blog post.  He is up there among young important and ambitious  guys of this generation of innovators like Steve Jobs of Apple products and Zukerberg of Facebook and Gates of Microsoft.  He is Jack Dorsey who is an American web developer and businessman widely known as the creator of Twitter and as the founder and CEO of Square, a mobile payments company.

His name doesn’t resonate from our thoughts or lips because he does not make public appearances or statements often yet he is creator of a really useful networking tool called Twitter. His low profile has a lot to do with his quiet personality.  He even describes himself as extraordinarily reserved and shy.  Isn’t it quite ironic that a shy guy is the one responsible for the change in the way people communicate around the world.  

He is now even considered to be the one person who has changed how we purchase goods around the world.  His latest creation is a company called Square that will eliminate checks and most currency in the way we pay for things.  Square is still a start up company but represents a new way of commerce.   Many believe that Jack Dorsey is the intellectual successor to Steve Jobs because he created the code for Twitter with messages that unlike e-mail can be read by anyone in the world. When he created Twitter seven years ago, Jack had no idea how big it would become that now 200 million people would be sending a billion Tweats every three days.

It has gained a distinction as an important communication device for free advertising and to spread messages quickly.  It was used effectively during the Arab uprisings against their dictators.  Twitter communication organized protests all over that region.  A Congressman, Anthony Weiner, saw his job fade away because he decided to Tweet his weiner, his personal parts to various girlfriends.  Twitter has become a marketing tool for Hollywood and big business to advertise what they are selling to their followers.  A celebrity can determine how popular they are by knowing the amount of Twitter followers they have on their accounts.

Our President Tweets and our former Pope had a Twitter account. Pope Benedict ‘s last message publicly was through a Tweet. Jack is most proud of how the general public embraced his invention an actually use it many times on a daily basis.  He loves that an ordinary person with a $20 cell phone can communicate instantly with someone rich and powerful.  Jack Dorsey’s own inability to communicate easily was the main reason he was forced out of the company he founded.  Steve Jobs was also forced out of Apple for a while.

Two and a half years later, new management at Twitter invited him back to help run the company.  So, now he has two jobs one with Twitter and another with Square.  While Twitter is about messages, Square is all about money. It allows anyone with a smart phone to become a merchant.   The software is simple and easy.  You get a white jack with a swiping area that plugs into your earphone jack. You type in the amount for the purchase and then you sign for a receipt electronically.  Millions of small businesses are using this system now.  Raising funds for political campaigns use it along side tag sales on people’s lawns.

People like to use Square because the fees are less than some credit cards charge.  Business at Square is booming accelerating in three years from zero to 12 Billion dollars in annual transactions. His plan is to spread the use of Square internationally to Europe and Asia.  Thank God for our young innovators and inventors from America that continue to prove globally that this country can and does produce the best for the world still.   

This blog is about the fact that the micro blogging juggernaut Twitter will start its first day of trading as a public company November 7th.  Twitter shares should start trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker TWTR.  Twitter is the most important technology IPO since Facebook’s troubled public market debut last year.  The service has become a global media phenomenon.  But it is sometimes confusing for newcomers, and Twitter currently has about a quarter of the users that Facebook does.  Shares for Twitter should be selling at about $17 to $20 dollars per share.

The company now has about 230 Million monthly active users but that represents only 10% of global penetration.  They hope to make it easier to use and advertise it more. So, will it be a trick to your stock portfolio or a treat.  Dare to take the plunge hahahahah.