Twitter Inc., the microblogging service with more than 200 million members worldwide, filed to go public, moving closer to the most highly anticipated offering since Facebook Inc.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) will be the lead underwriter for the initial public offering, according to people with knowledge of the matter who asked not to be identified because the information isn’t public. Twitter -- which disclosed it had filed to go public in one of its 140-character messages known as a tweet -- didn’t say when it may complete its market debut, or how much it plans to raise.

A public listing marks a watershed moment in Twitter’s journey from its 2006 beginning as a way for Web users to publish short messages, to a megaphone for hundreds of millions of members worldwide to join conversations on global affairs, sports and entertainment. Chief Executive Officer Dick Costolo will need to convince investors that the offering will fare better than Internet IPOs from Facebook, Groupon Inc., and Zynga Inc., which all lost more than half their value following their listings.

The San Francisco-based company was valued last month at about $10.5 billion by GSV Capital Corp. (GSVC), one of its investors, up 5 percent from a May estimate. Facebook, which raised $16 billion last year in the biggest IPO for a technology company, has a market value of about $109 billion.

Read More