Facebook's reputation complicates Twitter's IPO.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - When Facebook was preparing to go public last year, the phones at Granite Investment Advisors rang non-stop because clients wanted to know about the company's highly anticipated debut.

In stark contrast, Granite received no phone calls about Twitter on Friday morning -- a day after Twitter announced it would go public, likely by the end of the year.

"No calls so far," said Tim Lesko, chief executive of Granite Investment Advisors, adding that he himself would be cautious until he saw a few more quarters of financial results.

"We want to start seeing numbers," he said. "They need to mature a little more before we consider the numbers to be good and consistent."

While Twitter heads toward the most anticipated initial public offering (IPO) of the year, memories of Facebook's disappointing 2012 debut dampen enthusiasm for the eight-year-old company's stock.

Like Facebook, Twitter has strong brand recognition, which typically translates into retail investor interest. This was one of the reasons that led Facebook to achieve a price of $38 per share in its IPO, with a market value of $100 billion, or 99 times its 2011 profit.

Facebook's stock fell on its first day of trading and continued to decline in the following months. The company did not regain its IPO valuation until more than a year later, in August of this year.

Twitter has not yet determined the price, but analysts expect the company, which posted a loss of $69 million last year, to be valued at at least $10 billion.

(By Poornima Gupta)