Twitter announced on Thursday that its initial public offering would raise between $1.25 billion and $1.44 billion (up to 1 billion euros) and value the company at up to $10.9 billion, according to regulatory documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

The filing stated the company would sell 70 million shares in a price range between $17 and $20 each.

If all the shares are sold, the underwriters can buy another 10.5 million shares which would raise as much as $1.6 billion.

The valuation is more modest than the $15 billion that some analysts had expected for the social media phenomenon.

The San Francisco-based short messaging system said last week it would list on the New York Stock Exchange under the trade symbol "TWTR.”

Twitter's offering is the most high-profile Internet IPO since Facebook's rocky debut in May 2012 on the tech-heavy Nasdaq. Days after it went public its shares fell below their offering price.

Twitter has about 230 milion active users worldwide. This compares to 240 million for Linkedin and is just a fraction of the almost 1.2 billion users Facebook claims to have.

The offering is expected in the coming weeks.

The IPO is being managed by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, BofA Merril Lynch, Allen & Co, Deutsche Bank Securities and Code Advisors.

hc/lw (Reuters, AFP, AP)