[Update: In the hour since TWTR made its debut, shares have skyrockets 92% from its initial $26 offering to $50. I could have made a clean $2000 profit in the course of a few hours. Damn.]

Twitter made its stock market debut today under the TWTR symbol. The initial public offering was set for $26 a share last night with roughly 70 million shares being offered with an option to buy another 10.5 million . If/when all of Twitter’s shares are bought, the company will be valued at $18 million. Unlike Facebook’s stock market debut last year that was hounded by glitches and technical errors due to the Nasdaq, Twitter decided to premiere on the New York Stock Exchange.

Last week, it was predicted that the shares would be priced somewhere between $17 – $20, which would have been better for Joe Schmoes like me to enter the stock market with. However, the number was seen as lowballing the company’s worth, causing it to be bumped by almost another $10. Despite having more than 232 million users, the company hasn’t turned a profit in its seven years. Twitter’s biggest challenge is driving revenue in from users abroad as close to 174 million Twitter users are outside of the United States, yet only 26% of the company’s revenue comes from foreign ads. Of course, now that Twitter is a publicly-traded company, expect a lot more ads to appear on your timelines or services such as the Comcast/Universal deal that was announced last month.

I spent the last week preparing to buy roughly 10 shares in Twitter, only for work and personal projects getting in the way. My boss also warned me yesterday afternoon, “Geoff… stay out of the shark tank.” How many of you are thinking about/already have jumped into the shark tank? Do you see Twitter becoming profitable within the next couple of years? Or will it follow Facebook’s path down dangerously dropping prices over its first year of trading?

[via The Verge]