Twitter Already Profitable After Search Deals

For quite a long time, speculating on how and when will Twitter make money has been a favorite discussion point for the tech media, but it now looks like the speculation is over, Twitter may have already reached profitability. The company still doesn't have a constant revenue stream, but the revenue from the recent search deals it struck with Google and Microsoft are said to be enough to make it profitable for 2009, according to Bloomberg.

The publication, citing people close to the matter, claims that Twitter got about $15 million from Google for full access to the stream and all the tweets and a further $10 million from Microsoft. These revenues alone are expected to be enough for the site to reach profitability as expenses are estimated to be at $20 million to $25 million. The biggest expenses for the service used to be carrier charges, which it paid to enable users to receive free updates from their streams via SMS. Recently though, the site's popularity gave it much more bargaining power allowing it to lower those expenses.

There are a few caveats for the moment though. Even if Twitter did indeed make the $25 million, which it hasn't officially acknowledged, it's unclear if the payments were an one-time deal or maybe yearly payment for the access. Twitter has had some other revenue generating deals this year but, on the whole, the issue is far from settled. Of course, the company can afford to take its time having recently raised $100 million in the latest funding round, bringing up the total to $150 million in investments.

Also very recently the first components of Twitter's business accounts plans have been popping up with one feature, contributors, being launched for testing purposes. Further down the road, the microblogging service plans to roll out other features and tools part of a paid service for companies and other professional users. Finally, advertising is not completely off the table as a revenue stream either.