Twitter is Already Turning a Profit, Says Report

Posted 12/21/2009 at 2:59pm | by Pulkit Chandna

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The powers that be at Twitter have always skirted questions concerning the three-year-old social media company's lack of a revenue model. With them focusing solely on wooing more and more people to the microblogging platform, profitability seems improbable, if not impossible. But Twitter has managed to do the unthinkable.

According to a BusinessWeek report, which cites unnamed sources, Twitter has finally become profitable. It achieved this unlikely feat by inking separate search deals with Google and Microsoft. Although the news of the deals is rather stale and the ink on them fully dry now, this report is the first to quote definite figures.

BusinessWeek claims to have learned from its sources that the two deals, signed back  in October, have together earned Twitter $25 million. The deal with Google is said to be worth $15 million and that with Microsoft around $10 million. Twitters's annual expenses, though officially unknown, are said to be in the region of $20-25 million. So even despite the two deals, Twitter must have only managed a small profit at best. The sources also revealed that Twitter's “telecom expenses” - it has to pay carriers for the millions of text messages sent through its service - have been reduced greatly after it successfully negotiated more favorable deals with carriers.