Saudi billionaire Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, an investor in some of the world's top companies, has bought a stake in Twitter for $300 million, gaining another foothold in the global media industry. Alwaleed, a nephew of Saudi Arabia's king estimated by Forbes magazine in March to have a fortune of $19.6 billion, already owns a 7 percent stake in News Corp and plans to start a cable news channel.
The purchase is remarkable because Twitter was a key means of communication for protesters in the Arab Spring revolts this year, violence that threatened Saudi Arabia until the kingdom unveiled a populist $130 billion social spending package. The Twitter stake, bought jointly by Alwaleed and his Kingdom Holding Co investment firm, resulted from "months of negotiations", Kingdom said.
Twitter chief executive Dick Costolo valued the company at $8 billion in October, according to media reports, which would peg the size of Alwaleed's investment at just under 4 percent. Twitter, which allows people to send 140-character messages, or Tweets, to groups of followers, is one of the Internet's most popular social networking services, along with Facebook and Zynga.
Bernhard Warner, co-founder of analysis and advisory firm Social Media Influence, said: "The Arab world, of course, knows full well the value of Twitter. In the past year, it has been a force in politics, in regime change, so there is not a single person in that region in a position of influence who is not following the increasing power of Twitter.
"(Alwaleed) must see Twitter as something that is going to be a really powerful broadcast channel," he said, adding the Saudi had got into the Internet boom belatedly, with mixed results, and appeared to be "kind of late" to the game again.
Investors in Saudi Arabia were more bullish, sending shares in Kingdom up 5.7 percent to 8.30 riyals at the close. "One of the few sectors to record significant revenue gains in the last three years has been technology, which is why Kingdom would see Twitter as a good addition to its diversified portfolio," said Hesham Tuffaha, head of asset management at Bakheet Investment Group in Riyadh.
Saudis are increasingly turning to satellite television, online news providers and social networking to stay abreast of world events. The world's No 1 oil exporter announced a series of stricter regulations for journalists earlier this year. Alwaleed, 26th on the Forbes list of billionaires with a sizeable stake in Citigroup, has spoken in favour of broader political participation, fair elections and effective job creation across the Arab world.
He has also been publicly supportive of management including the Murdochs at News Corp and Citigroup chief executive Vikram Pandit. Several Arabs tweeted that they were worried Alwaleed's purchase would influence strategy negatively at Twitter. But Abdel-Khaleq Abdullah, an Emirati political scientist, said the investment was unlikely to raise eyebrows in official circles. "He just saw an opportunity, a money-making opportunity, nothing more, nothing less," he said. "(Internally), it's going to be viewed as a shrewd investment and I don't think we should read too much into it."
The prince's wife, Princess Ameerah al-Taweel, is a regular Tweeter and has nearly 83,000 followers on the site. Investors are eagerly anticipating an initial public offering from Twitter, which said in September it was in no hurry to go public. It raised $400 million in venture capital financing this summer. It now counts more than 100 million active users who log onto the service at least once a month. Facebook, the world's largest social network has more than 750 million active users.