Monetizing Twitter

2009 is the year that Twitter broke through to become mainstream. A tremendous wave of growth (58 million worldwide users per month by the end of December) not only made Twitter a household word, but it made the company profitable by the end of the year. Twitter cut deals with Google and Microsoft's Bing to make Twitter content searchable. Reportedly, the two deals brought in $25 million.

Until now Twitter has been focused on building its user base. Now the company is turning its attention on how to monetize its high volume of traffic and user loyalty. Besides the search deals, Twitter is looking to other ways to generate revenue, including selling advertising and charging companies for a premium services that would include traffic analytics.