Image by: Andreas Eldh
By Steven Morrison II

After Facebook’s initial public offering fiasco, observers are keeping a close eye on the next possible big thing in IPOs: Twitter. That’s right, the social media phenomenon is expected by some to go public sometime before 2014. Others think it will happen sooner than that.

That flies in the face of what senior executive at Twitter have made in the press in the past few months. Should we believe them or is this an deliberate attempt by the Twitter gang to keep the howling wolves at bay?

Then there’s that Facebook mess, which is still grabbing headlines. That public relations nightmare could have easily spooked the Twitter folks into holding off the IPO for a year or two, to let everybody forget about the magical world of Mark Z.

How big and powerful is Twitter? According to reports, in past two years, Twitter has watched as its usage has grown times two. We’re talking 400,000 “tweets” per day. And the company is finally figuring out how to make money off of all of this communication. Ads as tweets will push the company to staggering revenues in the coming years, predicted to be over $1 billion by as soon as 2014.

Such numbers have investors chomping at the bit to buy into the company.

Maybe You Won’t Get A Chance

There are those who believe that Twitter will actually bypass the public route and arrange to be bought out by Microsoft, Google or Apple. But let’s say Twitter does an IPO, how do you cash in, especially when to stock could likely fizzle like many of the Internet sensation stocks?

Short that sucker. That’s right, insiders say the best way to make bank on, say, a Twitter IPO is to short the IPO stock just before the IPO lockup period ends. Statistically, this would be a healthy move.