Shares in Twitter soared on the social networking giant’s first day of trading on Thursday as investors scrambled to own part of a company that has become a new communications standard for the digital age.

Twitter shares opened at the New York Stock Exchange at $45.10 just hours after Twitter said it was pricing its initial public offering (IPO) at $26 a share.

The company sold 70 million shares to large institutional investors, who made huge profits as the IPO became the most eagerly awaited tech share offering since rival social network platform Facebook went public in May 2012.

Shares were soon trading at over $50 – an increase of more than 90 per cent from its offer price. But by the close of trading the shares had settled down to 44.94, representing a 73 per cent jump on the day.

“This is a giant poker game,” Lawrence Leibowitz, chief operating officer of told the New York Times. “It will be a bit volatile, but it’s a very exciting deal.” Reflecting the popularity if the stock, individual investors rushed to buy at higher levels, even as stock analysts warned of irrational exuberance.

“I bought at 45.97 just to say I was in on the IPO,” said one typical tweet, which came even as analyst Brian Weiser downgraded the high-flying stock citing “a relatively unproven” advertising model and “wild swings in investor sentiment.” Twitter raised more than $1.8 billion in the IPO, which valued the company at about $14 billion, far below that of Facebook, which was valued as high as $80 billion at the time of its IPO.

Twitter, however, has fewer users and its format makes it harder to advertise on, limiting its chances to immediately generate substantial revenue.

Twitter is also still losing money as it pursues rapid growth. The company said it lost $134 million in the first nine months of the year.

At the same time, revenue doubled to $422 million. The company said it had more than 200 million monthly active users and that it processes more than 500 million active tweets per day.

According to the prospectus, the largest shareholder is the investment firm Rizvi Traverse, which holds 17.9 per cent of the company’s shares, followed by co-founder Evan Williams with a 12-per-cent share worth some $1.5 billion.

Co-founder Jack Dorsey’s stake is worth more than $600 million at the IPO price, while chief executive Dick Costolo’s share is worth $200 million.

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