(Reuters) - Nasdaq acknowledged on Wednesday that its shareholder.com website had revealed Twitter Inc's (>> Twitter Inc) disappointing results about one hour ahead of the scheduled time on Tuesday.

The micro-blogging company's shares fell sharply after key numbers from the earnings announcement were tweeted by market data firm Selerity at about 3:07 p.m. ET. Nasdaq halted trading in the stock 20 minutes later.

Selerity said it had found the release on Twitter's investor relations website, which is managed by Nasdaq.

Twitter released its results - which had been due at 4 p.m. ET - at 3:33 ET and the halt was lifted at 3:48 ET.

The company's stock closed down 18 percent at $42.27, wiping out about $5 billion of market value.

"The posting was caused by an operational issue that exposed the release on Twitter's IR website for approximately 45 seconds," the Nasdaq said in a statement.

This was not the first time that Selerity has revealed earnings of a top company before the scheduled release time.

The New Jersey-based company, founded by former Thomson Reuters Corp (>> Thomson Reuters Corporation) employee Ryan Terpstra, broke Microsoft Corp's (>> Microsoft Corporation) earnings in 2011 from the company's website more than an hour before their scheduled release.

Twitter shares were down 5.2 percent at $40.08 in late morning trading on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Supantha Mukherjee in Bengaluru and Sinead Carew in New York; Editing by Savio D'Souza and Ted Kerr)