Is Twitter Worth $1 Billion?

After its $100 million investment by T. Rowe Price Group Inc. and Insight Venture Partners, Twitter will reportedly be valued at $1 billion. I’ve gone from Twitter detractor and critic to Twitter fan. But this seems like a really big number.

Is Twitter worth $1 billion? What do you think?

Back in February, Twitter was saying that it didn’t need more money and only took a $35 million round when it was approached by investors. Prior to the new $100 million Twitter had raised a total of $55 million in three rounds.

Now the pressure is on to generate revenues and/or find a buyer who will pay several billion for the site (though Twitter wants to remain independent). According to Google’s Ad Planner, Twitter has 67 million users globally. Compete shows almost 24 million users in the US as of August.

PaidContent summarizes a study that reflects Twitter users are twice as likely to “engage” with brands than users of other social networks:

Interpret surveyed over 9,200 internet users in August, finding that roughly 24 percent of the respondents that used Twitter, reviewed or rated products online; just 12 percent of people that used other social nets—but not Twitter—said the same. Twitter users were also more likely to visit company profiles (20 percent) than non-Twitter users (11 percent), and twice as likely to click on ads or sponsored links (20 percent vs. 9 percent).

Clearly Twitter is valuable. But did it need to raise $100 million more to succeed? Or did it have to because Facebook is trying to co-opt its features and supplant it among users? What do you think?