Is Twitter set to become profitable?

Micro-blogging site Twitter is to become profitable for the first time in its history, it has been reported - news which may interest businesses considering the site as part of a social media marketing campaign.

It will end 2009 with revenue of around $25 million (£15.63 million) and operating costs of between $20 and $25 million, which will mean a slim boost to its profit margins.

It is claimed the site has received payments from Google and Microsoft's Bing to allow the search engines to include its real-time updates in its search results, Bloomberg notes.

Commenting on the news, Mayank Bawa, chief executive officer and co-founder of Aster Data, said in terms of social media marketing, people were "still squabbling" about who owns the rights to the consumer data it generates.

"I think there is a lot of value in understanding social repositories of data - there's a lot of value in analysing Wikipedia and trying to understand how topics are connected," he added.

Mr Bawa went on to state that there was value in using public data to collate people's opinions.

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