SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter, a privately held company built on blurbs, has finally laid itself bare in documents that read more like a treatise than a tweet.

The roughly 800-page filing Twitter released late Thursday on its way to an eagerly anticipated IPO contains tantalizing tidbits about its growth and its attempts to make money from its influential short messaging service.

Prospective investors and rivals alike will dissect and digest those morsels during the next few weeks leading up to the San Francisco company’s Wall Street debut.

The suspense surrounding Twitter’s IPO was heightened by the company’s decision to take advantage of a law passed last year that allows companies with less than $1 billion in annual revenue to keep their IPO documents under seal until management is ready to make formal presentations to investors.

Thursday’s lifting of the veil means Twitter can start pitching investors during a so-called “road show” as early as Oct. 24. The company’s stock should begin trading under the ticker symbol “TWTR” before Thanksgiving, barring a market meltdown or regulatory hurdles.

Among the details released Thursday are the fact that Twitter has suffered uninterrupted losses of $419 million since its inception.