The New York Times
Twitter gets 55 million monthly visitors, it has raised $155 million in venture capital, and it has generated intense interest from Hollywood to Iran. But it hasnt earned much revenue and certainly no profit.
Back-to-back deals on Wednesday to make the company’s steady stream of posts available to Microsoft and Google’s search engines may point to a potential new source of cash. How large, however, is not known. The terms of the deals were not disclosed and Evan Williams, Twitter’s chief executive, said in an interview that revenue was “not the focus of the deals.”
Microsoft said it did not plan to put ads on its Twitter search service for now, and Google said ads might appear at a later date.
The deals represent the latest evidence of the intense interest in what is known as the real-time Web–the constant stream of posts and updates on Twitter, Facebook and similar services. Unlike traditional Web pages and blogs, that real-time information has not been easily integrated by search engines. More…