NYSE to hold dry run for Twitter initial public offering

NEW YORK » The New York Stock Exchange isn’t taking any chances with Twitter’s initial public offering. The Big Board said Friday it would allow trading firms to conduct a dry run of their systems to prepare for Twitter’s IPO. The NYSE test will occur on Saturday, according to a notice sent out to traders.

The exchange seems to want to avoid the technical problems that marred Facebook’s debut on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange in May 2012. The glitches were a major embarrassment for Nasdaq and resulted in a big fine.

The micro-blogging service is expected to go public sometime in November, possibly before Thanksgiving. It will trade under the ticker "TWTR" on the NYSE.

Twitter’s IPO is the biggest technology debut since Facebook’s. While Nasdaq won Facebook’s listing, one of the biggest IPOs in years, the debut was hit with trading delays and order failures. The Securities and Exchange Commission in May fined Nasdaq $10 million, the largest ever levied against an exchange.