Twitter Ekes a Profit for 2009

Twitter will be marginally profitable this year thanks to deals with Google and Microsoft that open up the social networking site’s streams to those companies’ search engines. The agreement with Google is worth about $15 million, while the Microsoft partnership should net Twitter around $10 million. The short message site is thought to have operating expenses between $20 million and $25 million.

Twitter pushed itself to profitability by cutting expenses, particularly how much it pays telecom firms to carry tweets. The site’s demonstrated popularity allowed it to negotiate better data rates. In a search for more money, the company also plans to introduce ads early next year, but they will be an “organic” fit, the COO tells Bloomberg. “Not, ‘Here’s the tweets and here are the ads.’” (More Twitter stories.)