Living in Silicon Valley, I often get the sense that my reality is being
warped. It really is hard to believe all the negative headlines when many
companies are raising huge amounts of money and growing at hyper-speed. Is it a
bubble? Perhaps so. Even high-profile IPOs like Pandora (NYSE: P ) and LinkedIn
(NYSE: LNKD ) have seen drops in their stock prices. But venture capitalists
don't seem to care. Their wallets are in overdrive. And yes, this week we got
the latest mega-deal: Twitter has raised about $800 million at a cool $8 billion
valuation. The investors include Yuri Milner's DST, T. Rowe Price and super
angel Chris Sacca. In fact, the transaction means there is no rush for an IPO,
which probably is a good thing. Even companies like Zynga and Groupon are
holding off on their public offerings. But there seems to be no letup in
Twitter's growth ramp. This week, the website reached 100 million active
users. What's more, it registers a whopping 230 million tweets per day. True,
these figures pale in comparison to Facebook's 750 million active users. But
they still show that Twitter is a highly relevant destination. And they handily
beat Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG ) Google+ service, which has about 25 million
registered users. But perhaps the most attractive thing about Twitter is its
mobile use. Keep in mind that 55 million users access the service via their
smartphones or tablets. This definitely is a huge growth opportunity. The VCs in
Silicon Valley might be driving up valuations to crazy levels and could wind up
seeing hefty losses. But hey, isn't this what innovation is about? It's
about taking risks, right? With so many investors in a funk nowadays, it
definitely is refreshing to see some that still are willing to make big bets on
the future. Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including "All About
Commodities." He does not own a position in any of the stocks named here.
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