Twitter brought in $25 million last year through content sharing deals with Google and Microsoft, which ultimately helped the microblogging platform turn a profit the same year it became a household name. However, these deals could be potentially undermining the value of Twitter's data in the long term, according to a BusinessWeek report.
In 2009, 50 million Twitter users posted 8 billion tweets, so Microsoft and Google are paying just about $0.03 for every 1,000 tweets they index in search results. Compare that to the $10 CPMs commanded by top media sites, and the Microsoft/Google deals put "almost no value" on Twitter's data, said Donnovan Andrews, VP of strategic development for Tribal Fusion.
Microsoft already expects to profit off of its inclusion of tweets in its search results, but both search companies could get a major boost when Twitter launches new software that adds locations to tweets, which would help region-specific searches.
Media companies that use Twitter to pull audiences into their larger websites are also having trouble monetizing Twitter activity, but some, including The New York Times, are profiting by selling ad packages aimed specifically at consumer who arrive at a site via Twitter.
