A report released on Monday from BusinessWeek indicates that Twitter will end 2009 profitable.  The microblogging site reportedly signed deals with Google and Microsoft’s Bing search engines that will allow Twitter content to come up in searches. In exchange for making its “tweets,” searchable on Google, Twitter gains about $15 million, while  the Microsoft deal is worth about $10 million.

Twitter launched in 2006, and has since become one of the most popular social networking sites on the Web.  A February 2009 report from Compete.com listed Twitter as the third-most visited social network behind Facebook and Myspace.  Like many social Web start-ups, Twitter raced to collect subscribers before focusing on profitability.  The site’s popularity has now brought up questions as to whether it will be scooped up in an acquisition, or  perhaps go with an Initial Public Offering.  The company was born out of a relatively small investment ($1 to $5 million), and has raised about $57 million from venture capitalists.

But Twitter’s revenue model has not always been clear.  According to The Industry Standard, “There’s no compelling reason for most people to use it, and many existing services — ranging from AIM to FriendFeed to social networks — have overlapping functionality. And how is it supposed to make money?”

It would seem, then, that Google and Microsoft have answered that question.  With an estimated 6 million unique monthly visitors and 55 million monthly visits, the value in Twitter may lay within the massive barrage of data its users blast out to the world.

Filed under: Internet, Social Networking by Tim Deal | Social tagging: Google > Microsoft > tweets > twitter