Various reports in the past couple of weeks have suggested that Twitter is in the midst of raising a new round of money that is akin to a hot-and-heavy speed dating session. A couple of weeks ago, the rumor du jour put the company&'s valuation in the $3 billion range.

But Techcrunch reports tonight that Twitter&'s valuation is more like $4 billion, thanks to a bidding war in which Kleiner Perkins Caufield &' Byers is now the likely winner.

At the recent Web 2.0 Summit, Kleiner Perkins managing director John Doerr said he regretted that his company didn&'t invest in Twitter when the valuation was much smaller. He said it wasn&'t clear at the time if Twitter&'s popularity would last and if it would figure out how to make money. But Twitter co-founder Ev Williams was quite confident that the company had found its business model in advertising.

Techcrunch says Doerr himself is leading the charge and doesn&'t want to lose Twitter again. Doerr and his partner Bing Gordon have recently been saying they think there is a big tech boom coming, not a bubble.

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Dean is lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat. He covers video games, security, chips and a variety of other subjects. Dean previously worked at the San Jose Mercury News, the Wall Street Journal, the Red Herring, the Los Angeles Times, the Orange County Register and the Dallas Times Herald. He is the author of two books, Opening the Xbox and the Xbox 360 Uncloaked. Follow him on Twitter at @deantak, and follow VentureBeat on Twitter at @venturebeat.

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