[j42]

I'm sorry but I'm not quite sure what you mean by this?

In 2011, 96% of Google's revenue was from AdWords -- in recent years that has lowered slightly due to their diversification and cloud services, but it's still at least a 70% share of their gross revenues.

Facebook is currently ~80%.

The money is in the ads.

[inthewoods]

You and I agree.

The original poster is talking about queries in a difference sense than a Google query - he's referring to it as an API call in a "firehose" sense - so I'm buying access to the Twitter data for my application. I'm suggesting that the number of people who will pay for those API calls is limited.

But no doubt that money is in the ads - that's why I suggested that they should turn the API back on, but require clients to display the ads. Sadly, I think this opportunity is gone as they have killed their developer ecosystem.

[j42]

I'm the original poster, and I was talking about ads, not metered queries. :)

[edit] and perhaps that was a poor choice of words. as a developer of high-volume low-latency exchange feeds, "query" has a bit of a different meaning to me.

[inthewoods]

Nope - the misinterpretation is my end - my bad. Re-reading your original I think we're on the same page. I think they need to reopen their API (if it isn't too late) and then just send ads as part of that package to clients and require them to display them.