Twitter Inc is close to raising $800 million (Dh2.93 billion) in funding and will use half the money to buy back shares from its employees and backers, according to a person with knowledge of the plan. The investment, which values Twitter at $8 billion, may be completed in the next two weeks, said the person, who asked not to be named because the funding has not been made public. The deal would give twitter\'s about 600 workers the chance to capitalise on their shares through private investors, rather than having to wait for an initial public offering. The company has remained on the sidelines during this year\'s resurgence in dot-com IPOs. LinkedIn Corp, a professional-networking site, went public in May. Since then, Pandora Media. held an IPO, and Groupon and Zynga have both filed for their own offerings. Twitter\'s worth has more than doubled since December, when it received a $200 million investment led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers that gave it a $3.7 billion valuation. It was pegged at about $1 billion in 2009, a person familiar with the matter said at the time. SharesPost Inc., an exchange for shares of closely held companies, has assessed Twitter\'s current worth at $7 billion. From / Gulf News