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Twitter's investors may need them to be wildly profitable. Twitter itself probably doesn't vanish if they aren't. And in the current VC climate, Twitter probably had a lot of leverage negotiating terms.

Twitter needs to be off-the-charts profitable...eventually.

In the meantime, ordinary profitability would relieve a lot of pressure to optimize for the short term in order to raise money.

The amount of money already invested on Twitter requires it to be out-of-the-charts wildly profitable.

How does Facebook compare in this regard?

Facebook needs revenue like the GDP of a small country to succeed.

Really? I don't see that. Only on the order of $100 million has been invested in Twitter so far, from what I've been able to find. Given that their revenue is already a quarter of that I don't think there's a requirement for off-the-charts wild profitability here.