Wait…Twitter Is Earning Money?

Twitter is famous for being cool but not having any sort of business model...but now BusinessWeek says it'll post a profit for 2009.

Microblogging service Twitter is one of those things on the Internet that’s mostly famous for being famous, not because it’s somehow discovered the key to Internet riches. Twitter’s 140-characters-at-a-time service has certainly captured a lot of attention and users’ imaginations, but it’s never had a clear business model: the company does not run advertising, does not charge for use of the service, doesn’t offer premium add-ons, and doesn’t sell any products.

Yet,BusinessWeek is reporting that Twitter may actually be in a position to post a profit for 2009, thanks to search deals it struck with Google and Microsoft’s Bing search service. So-called “real-time search”—which covers up-to-the-minute information that people are posting to places like Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking services—became a hot-button differentiator for search engines in 2009, and Twitter seems to have been able to cash in on those deals. According toBusinessWeek, Twitter will pull in about $15 million from Google and another $10 million from Microsoft for letting the services access and index public Twitter feeds. And although Twitter doesn’t publish its operating expenses,BusinessWeek estimates them to be in the range of $20 to $25 million, thanks in part to renegotiated deals with Internet and telecommunications providers.

The bottom line may mean Twitter is in the black for 2009…and it still doesn’t have a real business plan. Twitter has previously announced intentions to develop paid-for premium accounts and services, but so far no announcements have been made.