Twitter announces profit for 2009

Posted by Alisa Zykova on December 23, 2009 at 2:06 PM

Until now, Twitter may not have been considered a profitable company, but that is all to change. The popular micro-blogging enterprise will be able to notify the public of a small but present profit for 2009 thanks to US$15 million and $10 million deals with Google and Microsoft, respectively, PC World reported yesterday.

Twitter's deals with the two companies dictate that users' "tweets" be available on Google's search engine as well as the Microsoft-run Bing. It is not sure whether Twitter would depend on the two giants or whether it would be able to develop businesses to boost income (e.g. advertising or premium services), Reuters reported Monday.

According to Reuters, Twitter was aiming for only $400,000 in revenues during the third quarter of 2009 and for $4 million during the fourth. The information had been obtained by a hacker and was later published on the TechCrunch blog, the news wire reported.

Twitter recently obtained $100 million in funding, granting the company an overall value of approximately $1 billion. Analysts question the possibility of acquisition by Internet corporations such as Google, Yahoo or Time Warner's AOL, Reuters said.

Twitter previously paid significant amounts of money to telecommunications providers so that millions of text messages could be sent across wireless networks, Business Week wrote Tuesday. However, since gaining popularity the company was able to negotiate and have better financial deals, which of course helped its profitability.

Twitter allows users to send 140-character text messages or "tweets" to a number of subscribers who follow that particular user. In June 2009, the micro-blogging provider had 44.5 million visitors, which was 15 times higher than the previous year.