Twitter was valued at 8 billion dollars at its last funding round in 2011, but saw the growth in its valuation slow after the dismal flotations of Facebook and games company Zynga dented confidence in technology businesses.

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The social network was thought to have gone cold on the idea of IPO after the disastrous market debuts of some of its Silicon Valley peers.

However, Max Wolff at Greencrest said the company had started firming up its management team and was likely to start preparations for the hotly-anticipated IPO towards the end of this year, the Telegraph reports.

The micro-blogging network is worth around 11 billion dollars based on trading of unofficial shares in the company on the secondary markets, Wolff said.

According to the paper, Twitter has seen its user base grow rapidly over the last few years, but it has historically struggled to translate that into profits.

However, it has become more aggressive in its efforts over the last 12 months.