We’ve all heard about Twitter’s recent financial valuations, ranging from an estimated $11 billion to some as low as $9 billion, but according to Fortune, the actual valuation sits at $9.9 billion based on a new block of early employee shares.

Fortune recently said, “The shares were secured by a fund affiliated with Gentry Venture Partners, which has been pitching the deal to clients… It would seem the premium was to prevent the offering from being prevented by Twitter, which has been particularly stingy with employee liquidity… apparently in a response to the Facebook Inc free-for-all. No word yet on how many shares are in the block, or how well Gentry is doing in terms of attracting interest.”

The number of shares in the block isn’t something that was revealed, however this new block of shares follows an offer from BlackRock Inc, an investment management firm – one of the world’s largest asset managers, to purchase an $80 million dollar stake in Twitter valued at roughly $9 billion.

That’s roughly a ten percent jump in the valuation of Twitter since 2011.

There have also been rumors circulating that Apple Inc could be interested in buying Twitter. If so, Twitter could be better prepared to compete with Facebook. From Apple’s perspective, this could be an intriguing opportunity, obtaining a completely mobile platform in an attempt to gain more ground in the mobile market.

With some $1.16 billion, including a $300 million investment from billionaire investor Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, already invested in the social media giant, investors are eager for the company to demonstrate long-term profitability prior to going public. Twitter’s management team could find that delaying an initial public offering, before solidifying their business strategy, might keep them strong instead of falling down the charts like Groupon, or Zynga. After their IPOs, Groupon and Zynga, stock prices plunged because too many shareholders dumped their shares.

Finalizing this deal could mean a win for all invested parties. While early investors would be able to cash out, Twitter would have a much better chance of delaying an IPO until its really ready for the move. Twitter could be eyeing an IPO towards the end of this year, or the beginning of 2014.

Twitter, launched in 2006, has developed in to a live-news feed marketing platform for online users. The company is estimated to have roughly 500 million total users with more than 200 million active users. It was the world’s fastest growing social platform last year, with a 40 percent active user growth between the second and fourth quarters of 2012.

[Image via Flickr/eldh]