Twitter turns a profit... from Google and Microsoft

 

Gallery

By Barry Collins

Posted on 21 Dec 2009 at 16:32

Microblogging site Twitter has been thrust into profitability after signing two lucrative search deals with Google and Microsoft.

Twitter announced earlier this year that it had signed deals with both Google and Microsoft's Bing to include tweets in real-time search results.

Those deals were worth $15 million and $10 million respectively, according to Bloomberg BusinessWeek, which is enough to push Twitter into the black for the first time.

Twitter followed the Google philosophy of "attract users, worry about the money later", but many analysts were sceptical that the company would ever be able to turn a profit. However, with the long-term search deal in place, it seems Twitter's financial future is relatively secure for the foreseeable future.

Perhaps it will use some of those profits to beef up its security. Last week, [a href="http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/security/354241/twitter-taken-over-by-iranian-cyber-army" title="Twitter taken over by Iranian Cyber Army"]Twitter's website was hijacked by a group claiming to be the Iranian Cyber Army. Twitter claimed its DNS records were hijacked, resulting in visitors being sent to the rogue website for several hours.