Twitter has officially announced their submission of an S-1 to the SEC (News - Alert) for a planned IPO. The S-1 IPO filing requires that the company make public its previous revenues, as well as current ones. Profits and balance sheet holdings also must be disclosed ahead of their stock going up for sale to the public.

Twitter (News - Alert) announced the news via the following tweet:

Long Expected

Twitter filing for an IPO is not at all surprising. The company is expected to earn more than $500 in 2013 revenue, as well as take in more than $1 billion in funds from additional investors.

While the IPO filing is currently “confidential,” according to the tweet sent by Twitter (say that five times fast), confidential IPOs have been historically favored by companies that have less than $1 billion in annual revenue.

Twitter will still be required, though, to reveal its earnings “no later than 21 days” before their IPO presentation series.

Lessons from Facebook (News - Alert)

When Facebook went public in early 2012, the company immediately found itself involved in controversies as to what information had been disclosed to Wall Street analysts versus what those figures actually turned out to be.

Quite serendipitously, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg (News - Alert) had some kind words to say about Facebook’s IPO on Wednesday, noting that he believed the IPO had made Facebook “stronger.”

“In retrospect, I was too afraid about going public,” Zuckerberg said. “I’ve been very outspoken about staying private for as long as possible. I don’t think it’s that necessary to do that.”

Wall Street analysts are no doubt champing on the bit to discover how financially strong Twitter truly is. In the meantime, all that we can do is wait and see—tweeting out our concerns as we go.