Twitter Japan Tweeting All the Way to the Bank

Twitter’s Japanese arm may well be on its way to turning a profit next year the old-fashioned way: through ad sales.

Digital Garage Inc., the Tokyo-based technology company that provides Twitter to millions of Japanese chirpers, said the revenue of its newly restructured social-media unit is expected to more than double to 1.7 billion yen through June 2011, according to its revised midterm business plan. Twitter makes up more than half of that segment’s business, a Digital Garage spokeswoman said.

The company revamped the segment, called the “media incubation unit,” this year to focus on Twitter. It has generated some 200 million yen in ad sales in the first six months since it launched its advertising service in December, according to its annual financial report.

As of April, the logos of 82 Japanese companies, including Nissan, Panasonic and Sharp, appear in the ad slot of the Japanese-language Twitter site. The growing number of eyeballs skimming ads from Sony (SNE), mobile service Au and others will likely throw more dollars Digital Garage’s way.

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