New details have been unearthed ahead of social networking giant Twitter becoming a public company on Thursday morning under the ticker "TWTR". Most notably that the company is valued at $18.1 billion. 

Twitter come out hours before the initial public offering, announcing that trading will begin at $26 a share, after it increased the range on Monday to between $23 and $25 after initially setting it at $17 to $20. Twitter will offer 70 million shares of common stock, and another 10.5 million to be sold to its underwriters. The offering is expected to raise $1.8 billion in a milestone for the social network. 

Twitter will ring the opening bell at the New York Stock Exchange on Thursday to signal the beginning of trading. Many industry insiders are pegging Twitter's IPO as the biggest in tech since Facebook's $38 a share IPO in 2012. Even though Twitter is a fraction of the value of Facebook, many are hoping the stock will outperforms Facebook. Big banks will have first access to buying the stock, and it will later open to wider trading. 

When it revealed info to potential investors in October, Twitter said it currently had 218.3 million users accessing its social network each month, creating a whopping 300 billion tweets since Twitter was founded seven years ago. Mobile was also mentioned extensively in the filing, which makes sense because it's no secret that most users access Twitter from their mobile phones. Of the 218.3 million monthly active users, 75 per cent (or 161.25 million users) are accessing the social network via their phones.

twitter ipo priced at 26 a share valuing the company at 18bn image 2